


Runaway

by grungerofgotham



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Boys Kissing, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Growing Up Together, Homophobic Language, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Kissing, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Recreational Drug Use, Romance, Slow Burn, Tags to be added, maybe not but its some type of burn, mild blood and gore (its just a dream tho), questioning gender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:27:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 37,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23614471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grungerofgotham/pseuds/grungerofgotham
Summary: Gerry and Michael through the ages.
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael Shelley
Comments: 101
Kudos: 126





	1. 1989

**Author's Note:**

> For the purposes of this fic, Gerry was born in 1982, and Michael in 1983.  
> Disclaimer: I do not know what a 'child' is.

Gerard Keay is lost. The world is so much bigger than telly had made it seem. Gerard isn’t allowed to watch TV. They have one, big and old, without a remote, in the living room of their London flat, but his mother always turns it off when she catches him staring, enthralled, at the fuzzy screen, and delivers a sharp swat to his butt before telling him to go do his reading.

All of the books she makes him read are really old, and really weird. Gerard doesn’t know a lot of the words that the books use, but he knows none of them are good. He doesn’t know why anyone would want to read books when they’re all so terrifying. Sure, he’s seen kids reading books on TV, but he bets none of them are as scary as the ones on his mother’s shelf.

Gerard doesn’t like reading. He prefers to watch TV, because TV has programs about other children in it, who look happy, who he wants to be friends with, who are nice to each other. Gerard likes to think about what it would be like to have friends. They would share their toys, and Gerard would share his (if he had any). If he had friends, maybe he would be allowed to leave the house. Watching telly allows Gerard to think about these fun possibilities, until his mother catches him.

Reading, however, gives him nightmares. The books tell him of evils and fears, waiting for him in the dark, in the air, in the ground, in the food he eats and in the flies that will eat him when he’d dead. They tell him there is no escape. They tell him if he does escape they will just be waiting for him on the other side. There is no exit. Not from fear. They detail gory death after gruesome end after grisly demise, but still he reads. Because Mary tells him too. Gerard much prefers TV. 

It hadn’t taken him long, even with the only very small amounts of ‘real life’ he’d deemed telly was showing him, to realise that most kids go to a place called school every day, where they play with other kids and learn about things that won’t eat you and have fun. And that those kids have two parents, a mum _and_ a dad, who are nice to their children. Gerard thinks it sounds like a life he’d rather. A life he’s willing to lie, cheat, and steal for.

Gerard’s mother leaves one day. Nothing unusual, she’s just gone to do some shopping before the stores get busy after breakfast. It’s early, and Gerard is prepared. He’s got a bag packed with as much clothes as he can carry. Its only a couple of shirts and one pair of pants plus a few pounds he’d managed to steal from Mum’s special shoebox (she’d forgotten to lock her bedroom door that morning). He’s forgotten to pack underwear. He doesn’t think he needs food; his new mum and dad will have food for him, he thinks.

He creeps out the front door slowly, stumbling down the apartment building’s stairs and down the stone porch steps, fearful that someone might see him and tell his mother. Once its apparent that no one is paying attention to him, he takes off at a sprint in the opposite direction that Mary usually goes.

He runs as far as he can, until his little legs refuse to carry him any further, and he slumps against a brick wall, taking in his surroundings through heaving gulps of air. There are several buildings, but none of them are as tall as the building he lives in. They are all built from a warm red brick, and each is different, painted individual colours and small enough that only one family could live in each. A street runs between them at a quiet crossroads. Cars rumble by slowly, not in a big hurry to get anywhere on this suburban Saturday morning. Across the street from where Gerard stands is a mediocre expanse of green. More grass than Gerard has ever seen.

He starts across the road, and reels back when a car honks at him. He scrambles back onto the pavement and lets it pass, heart racing. When the coast is clear, he bolts across the road and into the park. He’d seen kids playing in parks on the telly once. It looks like a lot of fun.

He dashes over the grass to the playground and stops dead at the sight of other children his age, some younger, some older, squealing and darting around on the equipment. Others play on the grass while parents sit idly on benches scattered around the sand pits’ perimeter.

Gerard’s breathe comes short, and not because of the quick run across the grass. There are so many kids here. He can’t possibly make friends with all of them. And all these mums and dads already have kids. No way they’d want Gerard. Mum always says that parents don’t actually want kids, they just have to deal with their mistakes because that’s the law. Gerard doesn’t know what mistakes have to do with having kids, but his mum’s words have a way of sticking around.

“Are you alright?” comes a high voice from in front of him.

Gerard blinks back to himself and sees a young blond boy in front of him, probably about the same age as him. His hair curls around his ears and his mouth hangs open curiously to reveal big crooked teeth.

“What?” Gerard says.

“I said, are you alright? Cos you look very white,” the boy says, scrunching his nose up as he looks Gerard up and down.

“Um, no. I don’t feel very well,” Gerard says honestly.

The kid’s eyebrows perk up and he bounces on the spot, “Oh! I’ll be right back!”

Gerard watches, confused, as the kid sprints off toward a woman sitting on a bench. She has a bag sat beside her, and she ruffles the boy’s hair absently as he digs through the bag, then comes bounding back.

“Mum says, when you look all white like that, you just need a juice!” the boy sits on the grass with a colourful juice box in his hands, and tugs at Gerard’s arm until he sits down too.

He hands the box to Gerard, who looks at it quizzically. He examines it before tentatively ripping the straw out of its plastic and stabbing it into the aluminium hole at the top.

The other boy giggles, “Din’t your mum ever tell you about please and thanks?”

Gerard frowns, “No?”

“Really? Well: when you ask for something you gotta say ‘please’ and when someone gives you something you say ‘thanks’.”

“Oh,” Gerard says, looking at the juice box, “Thanks, then.”

“You’re welcome,” the kid taps his hands animatedly against his skinny knees. “What’s your name?”

Gerard pauses halfway through the juice box. “Gerard.”

The boy wrinkles his nose again. “Gerard? That’s an old person name. I’ll call you Gerry,” he says with a big smile.

Gerard frowns, “But that’s not my name.”

“It’s a nickname.”

“Oh,” Gerry’s brow eases. “You gotta name?”

“I’m Michael!” the boy beams. “Do you live around here?”

Gerry shakes his head, “No.”

“Do you live in London?”

“Yeah,” Gerry replies.

“Jeez, you don’t talk much.”

“And you don’t shut up much.”

The boy closes his mouth and looks away, and Gerry starts to feel very bad. Michael crosses his arms and pouts, “Dad says the same thing.”

“Sorry,” Gerry says quietly, hesitantly patting Michael’s shoulder. “My mum says I can be very rude sometimes. I don’t mean to be.”

Michael looks back at him with big grey eyes, “Okay.” He doesn’t say any more for a while.

“Do you… go to school?” Gerry asks.

Michael giggles, “Yeah? Everyone goes to school.”

“I don’t,” Gerry mumbles.

“What? How do you learn anything?” Michael says incredulously.

Gerry doesn’t like that question. When he’d left, he’d felt sure that he would never ever have to talk about those books ever again. So he lashes out, “Maybe if you weren’t _stupid_ , you wouldn’t have to go to school, neither.”

Michael’s eyes well up with tears, but Gerry doesn’t allow that to get to him, “What are you crying for, baby?”

Michael screws his eyes shut and flings a hand out at Gerry. It catches him in the face with a sharp slap, and Gerry’s skin tingles. Tears spring to his eyes as his cheek burns in the shape of a hand. Michael is still there, and he’s still sniffling. Gerry can’t help but let out a small hiccupping sob too.

“I’m sorry!” Michael squeals, and throws his arms around Gerry where he still sits on the ground.

Gerry freezes. Even the fat tears clinging to his lashes halt for a second before spilling onto his cheeks. Tentatively, he returns the hug, far too stunned to do anything else. “B-but I was mean to you first!”

“It’s okay, Gerry. I shouldn’t have slapped you. Mum says violence is never the answer,” Michael says, small hands bunching in the back of Gerry’s shirt.

Gerry doesn’t answer, just waits for Michael to pull away and sit back down next to him. Michael wipes his nose on the hem of his shirt and wipes at his eyes with his hands. “Wanna play a game?” he asks.

“You… why do you want to? Don’t you hate me?” Gerry stammers.

“No, silly! Friends fight all the time. But they are always still friends at the end, that’s why the word ends with ‘end.’”

Gerry stares at Michael, agape, “We’re friends?” _It’s that easy?_

Michael beams at him and sniffs, nose still running, “Yeah! So do you wanna play a game or not?”

The boys spend a fair few hours playing tag or make believe. Gerry loves playing with Michael. He loves playing tag especially, because of the way Michael giggles and screeches when he catches him, and how Gerry can feel the same sound bubbling up inside of him when he hears Michael’s footsteps gaining fast behind him, accompanied by a giddy joy. He also loves going down the slide. They go one after the other and compare the way the hair on their arms stands up from the static.

Gerry was unfamiliar with the games at first, so Michael explained the rules to him patiently. Gerry is so shocked to find that when he asks Michael a question, he just answers it! Just like that! Usually when he asks his mum anything, she’ll say, ‘I can’t do everything for you Gerard, you’re going to have to find out for yourself.’ Gerry finds himself thinking that he could probably ask Michael anything, and he would probably answer him nicely.

“Hey, Michael?” Gerry starts, when they’re both lying exhausted on the grass.

“Yeah?” Michael says, still breathless.

“Can I come live with you?” Gerry says, hardly above a whisper.

Michael gasps and sits up, “We could have a sleepover!” 

Gerry sits up too. It’s not exactly what he asked for, but he’ll take it, “Okay!”

“You gotta ask your mum, though,” Michael says.

“Don’t have one,” Gerry lies, not remembering that he had mentioned her earlier.

“Really?” Michael says, looking sad and surprised, not remembering either. “What about a dad?”

“Nope,” Gerry tells the truth this time.

“Guess it’s up to us, then!” Michael says, grinning and pulling Gerry up by the wrist, dragging him over to the woman sitting on the bench. She’s reading a book, and hardly looks up when Michael arrives at her side.

“Mum can Gerry stay over tonight? He has permission!” Michael says, trying and failing to wink at Gerry. 

“Yes, yes, go have fun,” she says vaguely, waving them away without taking her eyes from the book.

Michael jumps giddily, and with an excited ‘Come on!’ he darts off toward the edge of the park and over to the street. Gerry follows.

They come to the same intersection Gerry had crossed before, but Michael holds an arm in front of him before Gerry can cross. “You always have to hold hands before you cross the road!” he takes Gerry’s hand.

Michael’s hand is warm and sweaty, but Gerry doesn’t mind as Michael pulls him across the road when he deems it safe. It isn’t long before they arrive at a house, similar to the ones Gerry had seen before, and Michael leads him up the porch steps, and up the stairs inside the home to a small room. 

It’s decorated with dinosaur decals and the floor is littered with various objects. Gerry recognises them as toys. He’d never had toys of his own, he wonders what’s the right way to play with them.

They wile the hours away playing different games and activities. Gerry decides some of them are a little too childish for him, but given that he’s never really played games before, he can’t really bring himself to care. It’s about mid-afternoon when Michael starts to yawn. He drops the doll he had been pretending was a wizard and rubs his eyes tiredly.

“Mum usually makes me take a nap in the afternoon,” Michael says, “Sometimes she forgets to come tell me, and I can’t read clocks yet.”

Gerry looks at the clock hanging above the bed. It reads 2:30. “It’s 3:30,” he says.

Michael’s eyebrows shoot up, “You can read clocks?”

“Kind of,” Gerry winces.

“That’s nap-time,” Michael says and climbs up onto his bed.

Gerry remains on the floor, feeling a bit lost.

“C’mon, Gerry,” Michael says, patting the bed beside him.

Gerry hesitantly lies down next to him and lets the sound of Michael’s breathing lull him to sleep.

*

Gerry is woken by the sound of Michael’s mother knocking gently on the doorframe. “Rise and shine, boys, it’s time for dinner!”

Michael shoots up in bed, and nearly trips off it when his foot is caught on Gerry’s leg.

“Who’s your friend, Michael?”

“Gerry! He was at the park and he’s allowed to stay over,” Michael says excitedly.

“Okay, then. Gerry, would you like to come eat dinner with us?” She asks with a kind smile.

“Um, yes,” Gerry says, then glances at Michael, “Please?”

She smiles and ushers the boys down to the dinner table, where they are seated across from each other, with Michael’s mother sitting between them at the end. Dinner commences with a weird ceremony that Gerry is unfamiliar with. They all hold hands, Michael and Michael’s parents, and Gerry, and Michael’s dad says some stuff about being blessed and something about a person called Jesus. Only after are they allowed to eat.

Dinner is roast chicken, with mashed potatoes and unseasoned boiled green beans and peas. Gerry is delighted to try chicken that isn’t nuggets, and potatoes that aren’t fries, but he isn’t too keen on the ‘beans.’ They look nothing like baked beans, and don’t taste as good either. Gerry eats all of it anyway.

At some point Michael’s mum places her cutlery down on the table and turns to Gerry with a gentle smile. “So, Gerald, would you like to call your mother on the phone to say goodnight?”

“No, um, thanks,” Gerry says, not meeting her eyes.

“He doesn’t have a mum!” Michael says, whispering very loudly.

Gerry tries to kick him under the table, but his legs don’t reach. Michael’s mum goes very still, then looks toward the silent man across the table and pulls an unpleasant face, like she just ate something gross. Probably those green beans, Gerry thinks.

“I’m… sorry,” the woman says, “What about your father?”

Gerry shrugs, “Don’t have one of those neither.”

Her brows draw together, “Who takes care of you?” she says, trying to discreetly peak at how he’s dressed.

He shrugs again, thinking if he doesn’t answer maybe she’ll leave it alone and he can continue to live here and play with Michael. Maybe if he stays long enough, they’ll be more than friends- _best_ friends. He looks up at Michael to find him grinning mischievously as he lines up a pea at the edge of his plate, then flicks it at Gerry. It hits Gerry in the forehead, and he giggles, despite the tense atmosphere around the table.

“Michael!” The man barks suddenly. Michael’s smile drops and he sits up in his chair, hands flat on the table beside his plate.

The woman stands up quickly from the table, excusing herself quietly. She moves into another room and Gerry can hear her quietly talking. Michael looks at his dad out of the corner of his eye and sees that he has returned his attention to his food. Michael takes a green bean and sticks it in the gap between his front teeth, shaking his head back and forth so it wobbles. Gerry has to stifle another laugh and tries again to kick Michael under the table. This blow lands, and Michael giggles, kicking back.

Michael’s mother comes back in the room, and they stop moving. “Okay, sweetie,” she says to Gerry, “Everything’s going to be just fine.”

Gerry smiles, thinking she means that he gets to stay. He can stay and sleep in a comfortable bed and eat good dinners and be best friends with Michael! He looks to Michael and he is bouncing giddily in his seat, plate of food completely forgotten.

After dinner, Michael’s mum fusses over the two of them, making especially sure that Gerry has been fed sufficiently, and seats them both on a narrow couch and switches the telly on before leaving the room, twisting her hands anxiously.

Gerry whispers, “You’re allowed to watch telly?”

“Of course, silly, what else are TVs for?” Michael says.

Gerry laughs excitedly, and watches, rapt, at the scenes playing out on the screen. It isn’t long before he’s broken out of his trance by two tall men in uniforms coming to stand in front of the TV. Gerry recognises them as police officers. Mum calls them coppers. Mum doesn’t like coppers. One of them crouches down in front of Gerry.

“Having a good night, Gerry?” the officer says, smiling kindly. 

Gerry does not answer.

The man sighs, “Look, son. We’ve been told that you don’t have a family. We want to find you a new family, is that alright?”

Something like hope blooms inside Gerry. But no, he’s found his new family. He does not answer.

“Gerry wants to stay with us!” Michael chirps, sitting close beside Gerry, “Right, Gerry?”

He looks at Michael, and their eyes meet. Michael’s eyes are wide and shiny in the obscured light of the television. Gerry knows, deep down, that those are not the eyes of the boy who will be his best friend. He’s never going to see him again after tonight.

Gerry nods tearily, and Michael squeezes their hands together, and doesn’t let go.

“Okay, well, I’m afraid that i’n’t up to you two boys, it’s up to Mrs. Shelley. Now, son, if you would just tell me your name, then we could see about that,” the officer says, speaking slowly and calmly.

“It’s Gerry,” Michael says eagerly. Gerry’s throat is tight, but he doesn’t want to cry again. Adults get upset when Gerry cries.

“That’s great, okay, great start. Now, is that short for something? What’s your last name?”

“Tell them, Gerry!” Michael says.

He does not answer. He cannot help but let slip a few tears as Michael leans closer and whispers for him to tell them his name. “If you tell them maybe Mum can let you stay.”

Gerry lifts his eyes to Michael’s mother, standing still in the corner of the room. She stands with an arm tight around her waist, and a hand against her mouth. Her eyes a filled with tears, but not welcome. Gerry can’t stay here, and if he goes with the police, they will give him back to his mother. Gerry lets out a whimper and crumples into Michael, wrapping his arms around the skinny boy. He begins to cry in earnest.

Michael hugs him back, patting him gently on the shoulders. Gerry can hear him sniffle too, just beside his ear. A larger hand accompanies Michael’s on his back.

“C’mon, son, we gotta get you somewhere safe, alright?” the hands try to pry him away from Michael, and Gerry lets loose an involuntary wail.

Gerry feels his grip on Michael tested, and it breaks, as Michael’s mother rushes forward and holds Michael to her bosom, and away from Gerry. 

“Mum, why can’t he stay?” Michael yells tearily at her.

“He needs to find a home, sweetheart,” she explains, watching as the officer scoops Gerry up, now curled in the foetal position, and carries him away.

“He’s my friend, Mum! He’s home with me!” Michael cries.

She shakes her head and Gerry is carried through the door and deposited on the back seat of the police car. He is sure that is the last time he will ever see Michael again.

Gerry does nothing but cry and not answer questions and sit in a childishly decorated room for 5 hours. Attempts to console him fall on deaf ears and bribing him does not work. They try in vain to get any information out of him, but he does not talk.

When it’s getting to about 6 hours spent in that room, another police officer comes in and sits next to him on the low, brightly coloured couch. “I know you must be scared, Gerry, but we’re here to help you.”

He is scared. He is so scared that he’ll have to go back to his mother. He doesn’t want to go back. He doesn’t want to read those books anymore; he doesn’t want to only eat baked beans every day. He wants to play with Michael, and he wants to watch telly, and eat roast chicken, and have a mum like Michael’s, who won’t hurt him when he cries.

“Are you scared, Gerry?” she prompts gently.

He nods, gulping in a few shuddering breaths.

“What are you scared of, honey?”

“I don’t want to!” he cries, breaking his 6-hour silence.

“Don’t want to? Don’t want to, what?”

“Don’t want to go back home!” he hiccups, shaking.

“You have a home?” she asks, surprised.

Gerry doesn’t answer.

She sighs, “Why don’t you want to go back?”

Gerry thinks of books and fear, and buries his face in his knees again, crying even harder. He is so tired. He’s been here for so long and he wants to go somewhere nice, like Michael’s house.

“Just give us your name, sweetie, and you can go, alright?” she says, placing a warm hand on his back.

“Gerard Keay!” he wails, knowing as soon as he says it, he’s lost, and he won’t be getting a new family.

The officer gets up and pokes her head out the door, repeating his name in a flat tone before coming back to sit beside him. “You’ve done good, sweetie, just relax, and we’ll see what we can do, okay?”

Gerry does not answer.

They leave him to sit in that room alone for a further half hour. He’s handed a juice box and a bag of chips. Gerry thinks about all the juice boxes he might’ve had if he’d stayed with Michael, and feels like crying again, but no tears come, and he feels instead like he might just fall asleep, and wake up, and this had all been a dream. Maybe he’ll wake up, and Mary had never been his mother, but a figment of his overactive imagination, spurred on by a scary television program about an evil stepmother. Maybe he’ll wake up, and he’d lived with Michael all along, and they are already best friends.

Eventually a soft tapping comes from the doorway. Gerry’s mother and the police officer from before are standing there, both smiling gently.

“Hey, sweetie,” Mary says sugar-sweet.

Gerry hastily dries his face. He can’t let her know he’d been crying, or there’ll be hell to pay.

“I’ll leave you two alone for a second,” the officer says, and steps out into the hall, closing the door.

Gerry watches his mother’s face spring back into place. Gone is the caring, worried-sick mum. Her eyebrows drag down in a furious ‘v’ and her lips harden into an unimpressed line. She snaps her fingers and points sharply to the space beside her. Gerry jumps up and scrambled over to the spot she’d indicated.

“I’ll deal with you when we get home,” she says icily, then opens the door, vice like grip returned to Gerry’s shoulder, and smiles warmly at the officer on the other side.

Gerry looks back at the juice box on the table. He hadn’t finished it.

*


	2. 1994

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you find what you need in unexpected places.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couple things on this one.  
> I couldn't be bothered researching for a coastal town in the UK that fit my needs so I just made one up and it's called South Telschin don't ask me how it's pronounced.  
> There are homophobic slurs used in this one, specifically 'faggot' and 'queer'. If this is something that makes you uncomfortable, maybe give this one a miss.  
> Me: God, writing kids is so hard.  
> Also me: I'm going to write a kid fic! Hey Google, do 6 year olds have teeth?

Gerry Keay is twelve years old, and he’s running away for the last time, if it fucking kills him. He looks at himself in the mirror. He’s wearing a dark band t-shirt and ripped jeans. He’s wearing his biggest boots and he’s dyed his hair only a couple of days ago. He looks cool as fuck, especially with his switch blade just visible in his front pocket. Nobody is going to mess with him when he takes to the streets.

His bag is heavy with similarly dark clothes and about three days’ worth of food, if he rations it correctly. There’s just one thing that he still needs.

He opens his bedroom door, and it creaks much louder than he would like, but it shouldn’t matter. The door to Mary’s bedroom is ajar, and there is no light shining out from the room beyond. Instead, Gerry can hear her snoring loudly. He hesitates before pushing the door open, because realistically, she could be faking it. She could easily have noticed the chalky residue at the bottom of her whiskey glass and decided to pretend she was sufficiently drugged so that she could catch him in the act of stealing from her.

It would be just the thing Mary would do, too. Bypass attacking him for trying to drug her, and instead wait for him to commit a more damning offense; stealing from her, just so that she could really go to town on him. He decides it’s a chance he’s willing to take. 

Her bedroom door squeals loudly on its hinges, but Gerry does not stop. The key is speed. He drops silently to the floor at the foot of her bed and feels around under it for the shoebox. He suddenly becomes aware of a lack of noise in the room; Mary has stopped snoring. He freezes where he is and waits with bated breath for… anything really.

The bed squeaks and there is some slow movement from atop it, before the snoring resumes in earnest. Gerry relaxes, forcing his sigh of relief out slowly, so as not to make any more noise. He retrieves the shoebox and lifts the lid off. Inside is an absurd amount of paper cash. Surely, she has to know that he knows about this, right? Those lies he had told about trying to find his shoes under _her_ bed a few months ago may not have earned him a beating but they sure as fuck didn’t go undetected.

There must be thousands of pounds in this box. Gerry shoves his hand into the front pocket of his bag and pulls out a wad of fake cash he had shoplifted from the dollar store last week. He takes approximately half of the contents of the box and tries his best to cover his fake cash with the remaining real, before replacing the box under the bed and scurrying out of the room.

Two thousand pounds heavier than earlier, Gerry leaves his mother’s apartment, for what he needs to be the last time.

Mary moves a lot and drags Gerry around with her. He’s hoping that if he evades her for long enough that she might just skip town without him, and he can start his life anew, just like he’d always wanted. He knows, realistically, that if he’s picked up by police, almost an inevitability given his recently adopted shady-ass look, then he will be returned to his mother no matter where in the UK she may have fucked off too.

But a boy can hope, right?

As of about 2 weeks ago, they are living in South Telschin. It’s a fairly large coastal town on the South coast of England. It’s rather a nice place to live, if you’re the type of person to give a shit about that kind of thing, with scenic cliffs and beaches and good schools with cute cafes and award-winning restaurants. Gerry doesn’t care about any of that. All he’s ever wanted is to be away from Mary.

Gerry has run away more times than he can count. Not a small number of them ended in getting picked up by the police before he had even gotten to the end of his street. The times he had gotten further never really resulted in much. As young as he was, Gerry had limited life skills, and beyond the childish fantasy of finding a new home, a new family, there wasn’t much Gerry could think to do, especially in the early years. 

After the very first time, Mary had kept a close eye on him, and he couldn’t reattempt his getaway for nearly a year and a half. He doesn’t know how his small brain managed to retain the information, but Gerry had never forgotten the skinny blond boy he had befriended that day. He can’t remember his name, and no amount of racking his mind to find it has ever yielded anything. He remembers his face though, getting hazier and hazier every day.

Gerry has long since given up on trying to find him. Up until he turned 10, his thoughts as he ran from home were always of that boy. His friend, who he needed to find. That was where his real home was. As time went on and he forgot his name, Gerry’s thoughts turned from his phantom friend and were more intently focused on getting the hell away from Mary.

Even so, Gerry can’t help but feel a small spark of hope every time he’s breathing free air and catches sight of a head of curly blond hair. As the years go by, Gerry knows how difficult it would be to recognise a 6 or 7-year-old he knew for one day, as a 12-year-old now. His supply of hope never truly seems to run dry, though, even with the statistical improbability of finding him in South Telschin when they had first met in London.

Even as the number of times Gerry has left Mary ticks upward, trying to assimilate with his fellow youths has never gotten easier. The heartbreak he feels when he realises that he doesn’t fit in this world never hurts less, but Gerry keeps trying. If he had done it when he was 7 fucking years old, he could do it now. He just has to find the right place, the right people. The right _person_. Even if it isn’t the blond boy who had been so ready to share his home when Gerry needed it all those years ago.

Gerry wanders the streets early Wednesday morning. There are plenty of people around. Plenty of people to stare at him and wonder why a kid his age isn’t in school. Gerry isn’t worried about them. They aren’t the sort of people that would know Mary, and the sort of people Mary knows aren’t shopping through over-priced boutiques in the middle of the day.

Even if someone decided that he’s just a little too weird for this town, he’s gotten pretty good at evading the police. After all, he has been hiding from she who knows him best for his whole goddamn life. If he can hide from her, he can hide from anyone.

Gerry takes his time familiarizing himself with the town, poking around all the nooks and crannies he can find, before he comes across a school zone street sign, telling cars to slow down. He heads towards it and comes to a large brick building. It’s two storeys tall and rather old. A big stone archway reads ‘South Telschin Secondary School.’ 

He skirts around the building to find a tall chain link fence separating him from a large green oval. There are kids of all ages tossing balls to each other and running around on the grass. Some of the kids are really small, still young, perhaps even younger than Gerry, while most of them are older. He can see some of them even have the beginnings of facial hair.

On the far end of the oval there seems to be a cluster of activity, a small crowd gathered around four boys. Three of them are properly tall and broad, the kind of kids that might make Gerry think twice about starting any shit, _might_ being the key word, there. The other boy isn’t short for his age, but he is nowhere near even close to catching their imposing heights. He’s holding himself hunched over, trying to make himself small as the other three advance on him.

Gerry can hear jeering and shouting, watching with a frown as he sees the three bigger boys laughing and nudging each other. The smaller seems to be shaking, his curly blond hair trembling and shoulders tense with fear. The tallest of the boys, large and square, steps forward and pushes a meaty hand into the boy’s chest, sending him stumbling backwards.

Something boils hot inside Gerry, climbing up his throat and pouring fire into his veins. He scrambles up and over the chain link fence, scraping his knees over the harsh wiring on top, and dropping to the ground on the other side. He marches over the field, ignoring indignant shouts as he interrupts ball games. As he strides closer the loud mocking forms itself into words.

“What are you gonna do about it, girly-boy? Gonna cry about it?” the biggest is snickering. He lunges forward and smacks the boy in the side of the head, laughing as he sprawls to the ground with a pained cry.

“Oi!” Gerry shouts, using as big a voice as he can muster, “Wha’d’ya think you’re doing, you big fucks?”

The small crowd looks up as Gerry approaches. Most of them look confused, not knowing why some random punk kid has shown up at their school. Especially the three boys who’d been laughing, regarding Gerry with blank eyes and slack jaws.

“We’re picking on this dumb faggot, what’s it look like?” One of them says, pimply face trying its damnedest to sprout a shitty little moustache.

Gerry feels his face flush as adrenaline and rage douses his system. He darts forward and grabs a fistful of Rat Moustache’s shirt, tugging him down to slam a fist into his jaw, knocking him back.

“What the fuck?” Another exclaims, grabbing Gerry by the back of his shirt. 

Gerry tries his best to swing around and kick him in the nuts, but only manages to catch his knee. Hey: there’s an idea, Gerry thinks, and stomps as hard as he can on his knee. The guy’s leg crumples, and he curses loudly, right before a meaty fist lands in Gerry’s stomach.

A wave of pain and nausea doubles Gerry over, and he slumps to his side on the ground, clutching his gut. The same guy who hit him pulls him up off the ground and hauls his arm back, gearing for a punch that will surely knock some of Gerry’s teeth out.

Gerry fumbles his knife out of his pocket, flicking it open and grabbing the guy’s arm where he’s holding Gerry, positioning the blade over the fleshy insides of his wrist. He freezes, beady eyes watching the blade press into his skin, sweat beginning to roll off of his thick forehead.

“Fuck, guys, he’s coming!” someone shouts, and Gerry is dropped promptly to the ground, head bouncing painfully off the hard dirt. He scrambles to his feet and sees that everyone is high tailing it out of there as fast as they can go. A grown man with a short beard and glasses is approaching, assumedly a teacher. Gerry glances around for a means of escape and sees the blond boy standing there, watching him with big, oddly familiar grey eyes. 

Gerry darts forward and grabs the boy by the wrist, tugging him towards a gap in the fence. Beyond the fence is a densely wooded area, with small sticks littering the ground that snap and crunch under their feet. Gerry keeps running, and the boy runs with him, until they can’t see the fence anymore.

Gerry jogs to a stop, winded, and looks at the other kid. His cheeks are pink, and his blond curls are sticking up wildly. He’s looking at Gerry like a deer caught in the headlights. His gaze flickers down Gerry’s arm, and he realises that he’s still holding his wrist, and drops it like it’s scalding hot, face red, and not from the short run.

“Are you okay?” Gerry asks breathlessly, running his eyes down to where the kid’s knees are skinned bloody.

Grey eyes fill with tears again as he stutters out a, “Yeah, um, I’m fine.”

Gerry shakes his head, “I don’t think so. Why don’t you sit down?”

He looks up with his brow furrowed, but obeys anyway, sitting against the broad trunk of a tree. Gerry sits down in front of him and swings his bag around into his lap, shuffling inside of it for his makeshift first aid kit. “What’s your name?” he asks.

“Um, M-Michael,” he says, “You?”

Something deep inside Gerry’s mind bubbles to the surface. An image of a young boy, smiling devilishly as he lines up a pea and flicks it toward Gerry. His friend whose name he’d forgotten. It can’t be the same kid, Gerry thinks. It’s practically impossible. Even so, a crack in Gerry’s heart begins to knit itself back together as he finally fishes out his first aid kit.

“Gerry,” he answers.

Michael frowns again, looking like he’s trying to puzzle something out. He winces and lets out a squeak when Gerry begins to wipe away the blood on his knees.

“Why were they picking on you?” Gerry asks, watching patiently as Michael doesn’t answer at first, biting his lip and tucking his hair out of his eyes.

“They were making fun of my uniform. It’s not new and nice like theirs is. Plus… other stuff,” he explains, looking away.

“Hm,” Gerry hums, trying to find a bandage the right size. “How much does a whole uniform cost?”

“What?” Michael says, startled into looking at Gerry.

Gerry repeats his question slowly, and Michael looks no less confused, “Um, altogether, maybe 50 quid?”

Gerry doesn’t answer except to dig in a different pocket of his bag, pulling out a stack of notes and dropping it in Michael’s lap.

He jumps, looking wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the wad of cash, “W-what? I can’t take this! Take it back!” He shakily gathers up the money and thrusts it back in Gerry’s direction.

Gerry feigns confusion as he peels a knee sized bandage out of its packaging, “What’re you giving me money, for?” 

“It’s yours! There’s at least a hundred pounds here, I can’t take it!” he insists with a hysterical giggle.

“Ain’t never seen that money before in my life,” Gerry says, shaking his head and trying not to smile.

Michael laughs and smiles, dropping his hands back into his lap and leafing through the notes. Gerry catches sight of his teeth, a sizeable gap between his top front pair. Another picture emerges unbidden to the forefront of his mind. A grinning blond boy, a green bean stuck between his front teeth, eyes crossed as he watches the vegetable wobble. His name was Michael.

Michael looks up at him, still with that unsure expression, like he’s trying to puzzle out a difficult equation. “You don’t go here… What primary school did you go to? You look familiar.”

Gerry sits beside him against the tree, content with his work on the other boy’s knees, “I went to school in London,” he fibs.

Michael’s eyes light up, “I used to live there! It was ages ago though. I used to live near a playground, maybe you went there.”

Gerry looks at Michael and sees him six years old and handing him a juice box as they sit on the grass beside the play equipment. There is no longer any doubt in his mind. However improbable it had been, he had found Michael again. “Yeah, maybe,” he replies.

“Why are you in South Telschin? Do you go to St. Andrews? Why aren’t you at school?” Michael asks, drawing his knees up to his chest.

Gerry smiles at the torrent of questions, “I’m home-schooled.”

Michael giggles, “So it’s true what they say- home-schooleds are all weirdos.”

Gerry gapes at him, mock offended, “Oh, you wound me, Michael!”

“Sorry! Sorry, that was rude,” he says, still giggling, but with more of a nervous edge to it.

“S’alright,” Gerry says, watching Michael blush, and letting his gaze linger on the freckles sprinkled across his nose. He finds himself feeling the strange urge to touch them, run his fingers over them and count them until he loses focus, then count them again, if only Michael might let him. He wonders if he has freckles anywhere else.

Gerry tears his gaze from Michael. Those were some weird thoughts. His heart races as he becomes aware of how close they’re sitting, elbows brushing and knees knocking. What if Michael can tell what he’s thinking? What if it’s weird to think about other boys like that? He’s only ever heard boys talk like that about girls. And only girls are supposed to think that way about boys. He’s not allowed to… he shouldn’t want to kiss Michael, right?

Woah, wait. He wants to kiss Michael? That cannot be normal, boys do _not_ kiss other boys. 

“Maybe you can come hang out with me and my friends some time?” Michael says, dragging Gerry out of his mini crisis. He’s pushing a stick idly into the dirt, and not looking at him, thank god. He thinks that if Michael looked at him right now, he’d know exactly what he’s thinking, wrinkle his nose in disgust and run back to school, leaving Gerry alone in the dirt.

“Yeah, uh, that might be fun,” Gerry says awkwardly.

“We usually hang out at the park on Saturdays. You know the one on Lawrence street?” Michael continues.

“Yeah,” Gerry says again.

Michael barrels on, “Yeah, so, if you wanna come hang out, that’d be cool. Marcus might make you look at his gross porn mags though, so be warned.”

This surprises a laugh out of Gerry, and he feels Michael’s shoulder shake with laughter against him. Gerry decides to go out on a limb and ask, “What’s gross about them?”

Michael’s mouth works like a goldfish as he stutters out, “I, uh, I don’t know, it’s just, um…”

Gerry watches with amusement as Michael shrugs and stumbles over his words. “Don’t worry about it,” he laughs and claps a hand onto Michael’s knee.

Michael yelps and Gerry snatches his hand back, realising he’s just hit the knee he’d just bandaged. “Sorry, I forgot. You alright?”

Michael blushes again and nods, relaxing back against the tree before they are both startled to their feet by the sound of a siren blaring. Michael relaxes with a shaky laugh and says, “I need to get back to class.”

“Oh. Right,” Gerry says, fighting against the cold rush of disappointment.

“I’ll maybe see you Saturday, then,” Michael says, nodding too much and edging away from Gerry, back toward the fence.

“Yeah,” Gerry says, and picks up his bag from the ground, slinging it over his shoulder and turning away.

“Wait!” Michael says, a little too loudly, as Gerry hasn’t actually moved yet.

“Yeah?” Gerry says, looking back to see Michael wringing his hands, looking like he’s fighting against himself to move forward, foot edging back and forth like a broken record.

“I, uh, thank you, for helping me, today. You fighting those guys was really cool and everything, and, uh, thanks, I guess,” Michael darts forward and puts a hand on Gerry’s shoulder, leaning up to press a quick kiss to the side of his face.

Gerry goes deathly still, feet frozen to the ground as he watches Michael trip backwards on a root and barely manage to steady himself. He looks up at Gerry with wide grey eyes, again looking like a dear caught in the headlights.

Gerry swallows, difficult with his throat so dry, and says, “I’ll see you Saturday.”

Michael takes a breath, like he’d been forgetting to breathe up until then, nods hastily, then turns on his heel and runs back to the fence line. Gerry lifts a hand to his face, still feeling a tingle where Michael’s lips had landed, and remembers something else. A small, teary-eyed Michael whipping a hand out and smacking him in the face. God, he had always made an impact.

Gerry heaves in a shuddering breath, and out loud, only to himself, he whispers, “Am I fucking gay?”

He lets himself soak in the silence of the trees and the fading sensation of Michael, then slowly makes his way back to the fence, following its perimeter until he is back on the street and making his way toward the town proper.

He finds the closest blockbuster and heads inside, making sure the man at the register is busy with a customer before darting in between the aisles of movies. He browses the DVDs for nearly an hour before he finds what he’s looking for. A James Bond film, the cover of which features several scantily clad women, and a copy of Dirty Dancing with a sweaty Patrick Swayze depicted on the cover.

Gerry looks between them, brow furrowed. He considers the Bond women. Certainly they are visually appealing, with nice curves and bright, curling hair. Does he want to kiss them, though? He thinks about if any one of them had been in Michael’s place. He pictures one of them leaning forward and pressing their painted lips against him. He subconsciously turns his head away, mouth twisted into a distasteful pucker. Okay, that’s off the table.

He looks instead at Patrick Swayze and tries to picture him in Michael’s place. He gets as far as him leaning forward before he drops the DVD in a panic, hands feeling dirty. Okay, that’s even worse. Well, if he doesn’t like Swayze, he’s probably not gay, right? He nods to himself and puts both back, hastily leaving the blockbuster. 

But he doesn’t like those women either. Is there something wrong with him? Maybe it’s just that all those movie people are just too old for him? He thinks back to the movies he’d seen recently. River Phoenix in Indiana Jones had been something… Gerry tries to imagine that, and recoils less from the thought than he had the others. But it still doesn’t feel right.

Gerry is lost in thought as he heads toward a residential area, in the opposite direction to Mary’s apartment, intending to find an empty house to stay in. He tries to build a teenage girl in his mind, starting with a slim figure. He adds hair, blond, he thinks, and curly. He adds curves, trying and failing to make it sit right in his head. He takes the curves away and adds freckles. 

_That’s just Michael, you idiot,_ Gerry tells himself with a shake of his head.

He gets to the end of a cul-de-sac and finds an overgrown yard. The house that sits in the middle of it is worn down, half finished, and completely unoccupied. There’s a for sale sign sitting out the front, done over with spray paint, it’s paper flapping vaguely in the slight breeze. He goes inside, passing through where the front door would be.

He sits down in what could be a living room, surveying the graffiti on the walls before pulling a box of crackers from his bag. It was one of few items he knew Mary wouldn’t miss from the cupboard. He enjoys listening to the echoing snap of the stale crackers for a while before his mind drifts back to Michael.

What would’ve happened, if Gerry had turned his head at the last second? What would either of them have done, if Michael’s lips had landed on Gerry’s? Would his lips be soft or chapped? Gerry thinks they’d be chapped. He shakes his head, trying to banish the thoughts from his mind.

_I’m not fucking gay._

Would Michael’s hands be warm or cold? Would he run or stay if Gerry took them in his own?

 _Shut up_. Gerry’s breath begins to quicken.

Would Michael keep it a secret, if they kissed? Or would he tell everyone, and watch as Gerry was shunned from society, again?

 _Fuck. **Off**._ Gerry’s fingers are tingling.

Would Michael blush and smile if Gerry told him he was beautiful? Would he reel back in disgust, and slap him, just like when they were little?

 _God, no…_ The only thing echoing now is Gerry’s panicked, strangled, breathing.

What would Michael do if Gerry said, ‘I love you’? Would he laugh and call him a queer? Or would he say, ‘I love you, too’?

 _Fuck. I’m gay_. Gerry faints.

*

Gerry wakes up cold on a Saturday morning. He’s kicked the sheets to the foot of the bed. He thinks about pulling them back up and going back to sleep, but his dreams have been plagued by Mary’s cruel smile when she’d collected him at the police station after he’d been picked up for trespassing. 

She hadn’t laid a hand on him for the whole rest of the day. Gerry thought he’d hit the jackpot, that she hadn’t noticed half her stash was counterfeit. He’d woken to her scream of the rage the following morning and hasn’t been able to move without wincing since.

He gets out of bed and heads to the kitchen. Mary is there, pouring two full cartons of milk down the sink. She looks at him as she does so, then sips from a mug of milky tea. Gerry eats his cereal dry. He moves tentatively to the front door, intending to head to that park Michael had mentioned.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Mary says shrilly.

“To the park?” Gerry says, avoiding her eyes.

“No. Pack your shit. I have business in Norfolk, and we’re leaving at 11.”

Gerry slowly lets go of the doorknob and meets Mary’s eyes for a long moment. He drops his gaze and does as he’s told.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how many times I used the word 'boy' in this chapter but I think I'm legally required to change my name to Griffin McElroy.


	3. 1997

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A joint on the beach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's got some light recreational drug use in it, if that requires a warning. Also, some conversations about gender and sexuality.

Gerry is fifteen years old. He’d lived in more different cities and towns than he can count. Every time they moved, Gerry felt a little glimmer of hope and excitement. Maybe _this_ was the place that he could start over; start living.

As far as he is concerned, Gerry had never been alive, not with Mary. Gerry wants to be born, for real this time. He’s started to lose hope though, because he can never be a part of the real world. The best he can do is protect it from its evils. Well, maybe not all of them, but he thinks destroying this skid-stain called Jurgen fucking Leitner will be a pretty good start.

He’d actually only found one Leitner so far. He had brought it home to Mary and she had run her fingers over it reverently, looking at him with a peculiar sort of expression on her face. It almost could have been love. Must have been a trick of the light. Gerry had felt such a warm glow of pride inside him, thinking that maybe if he just kept delivering Leitners to Mary, she might start to love him like a mother should.

When he’d brought home something that he would’ve sworn up and down was a Leitner, but turned out to be a very convincing reproduction, she had sprung forward with fury in her eyes and tugged him down by his freshly acquired nose ring, then slapped him hard across the face. Still he tries to find her Leitners, and still the love in her eyes is for the books, and the books alone.

It’s been three years since he had met Michael at South Telschin Secondary School, and the memory is beginning to fade. Gerry tries to hold on to it tight, but every time he pictures him, there’s another detail missing. Was Michael’s hair short, or chin-length? Did his eyes crinkle at the edges when he smiled? What had they talked about? Time takes the image of him, piece by piece, until eventually, he can’t remember what the complete picture looked like. Gerry fears that he’s never going to see it again.

It’s been three years since last he saw Michael. And finally, he’s back in South Telschin, he and his mother living out of a hotel, Mary having long given up on the pretence of finding somewhere permanent other than London. Gerry had had a hard time trying to hide his reaction to Mary telling him where they would be staying for the next two weeks while she conducted her ‘business.’

It’s a Saturday, the day after they had arrived, and Gerry is in town. He’s standing at an intersection, disinterestedly watching the traffic rumble past and smoking a cigarette. He draws a few weird looks. He’s been wearing heavy make-up for a couple years now, and he know his aesthetic isn’t exactly pleasing to the general public. South Telschin isn’t a small town, but it’s no city, and there is no ‘alternative crowd’ to speak of.

Gerry is just trying to enjoy his mid-morning cigarette when he’s approached by a ratty-looking adolescent, nervously looking around as he edges toward him. He’s short, with greasy brown hair and an embarrassing attempt at a moustache sitting on his top lip. He’s obviously well off, though trying to pull off some sort of ‘minimum-wage cool’ look. His jeans are too big, hanging off his hips, but his sneakers are clearly very expensive, and his polo shirt screams wealth.

Gerry side eyes him as he shuffles closer and decides to speak first. “You looking for something?” he tries his best to sound menacing, and apparently succeeds as the kid’s face pales and his eyes widen.

The kid quickly recovers, smoothing his face into played-up nonchalance, “Uh, yeah,” he says, raising his hands in some kind of off-brand gang sign, trying to sound gruff. “Do you have any, uh, stuff, on you, mate?”

Gerry schools his face into an expressionless mask. This kid thinks he’s a fucking drug dealer. _Whatever,_ Gerry thinks, he’s got some cheap weed. Might as well sell it at a ridiculously high profit margin to this ratty prep.

He raises an eyebrow and looks out across the street, taking a long drag of his cigarette, for effect. “Yeah. I’ve got _stuff_. It’ll cost you.”

The kid laughs, almost giddily, “That’s not a problem, uh, what do you got?”

Gerry frowns and raises his hand in a ‘slow down’ sort of gesture. He makes a show of glancing up and down the road before saying, “Not here. You got a place?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the kid nods eagerly and waves for Gerry to follow as he turns and heads back the way he came.

Gerry allows himself a self-satisfied smirk as the kid leads him to a park, a small secluded spot between the public bathrooms and a thick, low-hanging tree. There are a few cigarette butts littered around. The road marker reads Lawrence St. This should mean something to Gerry, but he can’t quite remember what.

“What’s your name, kid?” Gerry asks as they come to a stop and the boy stands there fidgeting and not saying anything. Gerry knows he looks older than he is, but doesn’t want to do anything to give away the fact that he’s probably only a year older than him.

“Marcus,” he says, nodding and over-confident.

“Well, Marcus, you looking for some weed?”

The kid laughs nervously, “Yeah, uh, enough for me and my mates, I guess. For a week.”

Gerry haggles with Marcus, doing a fine job of making Marcus think he’s getting a good deal. It’s not exactly hard, this kid is dumber than a box of rocks, and Gerry comes out the other end of the transaction with a profit of over 100 pounds, and Marcus is glowing with pride at his first drug deal.

Gerry is just about to bid this idiot a good day and leave when two other boys around the same age show up. A stout brunette with glasses and a willowy blond. Gerry stops where he stands, positioned to leave, a chill going down his spine and a lead weight dropping into his stomach as he realises who he’s looking at.

Michael’s hair is longer, gold and curling against his shoulders and his skin isn’t as clear and smooth as it had been. Instead of a stuffy school uniform he’s wearing a light wash jean jacket over a high-necked white sweater, but it’s still definitely him. He smiles as he greets Marcus. He’s grown into his teeth, but there’s still that gap, visible as he chews nervously at his bottom lip.

The first thing that Gerry thinks flows out of his mouth with absolutely zero filter, “Christ, you got tall.”

All three of them look over to him, Marcus obviously annoyed that he’s still here, the kid with glasses looking wide eyed at Gerry’s intimidating figure, and Michael looking at him, head tilted, and brows furrowed.

“Who, me?” Michael starts to ask, before he cuts himself off with a soft ‘oh’ and his jaw drops open in shock. His eyes travel up and down Gerry’s form. “A-and you got, uh, dark?”

The other two look between Michael and Gerry, twin quizzical looks pinned to their faces. “You know this guy?” the short one asks.

Michael smiles slowly and says, “Yeah. Yeah, I think I do.”

This answer does nothing to alleviate the looks of confusion on their faces. Gerry ignores them and asks, “Wanna hang out?” he winces internally at how forward this sounds.

Michael apparently hears it too, as a bright flush spreads across his face. He nods, smiling, “Yeah, yes, um, sure.”

“What? But we were gonna-!” Marcus says, motioning insistently to his bag, where Gerry had watched him stash the weed.

Michael’s gaze darts hesitantly between his friends and Gerry, unsure of how to continue, “Um, I, but, uh...” He tucks a lock of hair behind his ear and twists his hands together nervously. Goddamn that’s cute, Gerry thinks, having long given up the struggle against thinking other boys are cute.

“Do you wanna hang out with them or with someone cool?” Gerry says, unsure if insulting his friends will be the right angle with Michael.

“Fuck, whatever, just go, Michael,” Marcus says. “We’ll see you later.”

Michael steps hesitantly toward Gerry. Gerry motions his head to the side, indicating away from the park, and turns. He tries his best not to look behind him to see if Michael is following, wanting to maintain at least a little bit of mystery.

“Sorry,” Michael says, as they step onto the sidewalk and begin their way through town, “I’ve forgotten your name?”

“It’s Gerry,” he replies.

“I’m Michael.”

“I know,” Gerry says, if only to watch the blush rise to Michael’s cheeks again.

“Where are we going?” Michael asks.

“I’ve got a place.”

“Looks like we’re heading toward the beach,” Michael says, “Is that _your place_?”

Gerry laughs, “Okay, yeah, kind of. Just wait.” They make their way down the wooden steps at the edge of the foreshore until they are on white pebbly sand. The skies are grey and it’s nearing the end of autumn. No one is on the beach.

Gerry holds his long dark coat tighter around him, and thanks the lord that it isn’t windy, too. He looks over to Michael, wondering if he’s cold as well, but finds no one beside him. He turns around, looking back along the beach to see Michael bent over and lifting something off the sand. He straightens, tucking his hair out of the way and examines whatever he just picks up. After a short moment he looks up and catches Gerry watching him, and jogs to catch up.

“I found a shell!” he says, and hands it to Gerry. It’s a large conch shell with a smooth iridescent interior. “You know if you put it to your ear, you can hear the sea.”

“That’s just the sound of your blood running through your ear echoed back into it,” Gerry says, running his black polished nails over the ridges along the outside.

“Or maybe it’s the fucking sea. God, way to take the magic out of it, Gerry,” Michael says, acting put out.

Gerry laughs and hands the shell back. Michael pushes his hand away and tells him to keep it with a small smile. Gerry hides his blush behind a curtain of hair and shoves the shell into a pocket of his bag as they come to a rocky outcropping. A large patch of jagged stones clustered around a shard of cliff at the edge of the beach.

“Can you swim?” Gerry asks.

“W-what? We are not swimming in this weather!” Michael exclaims.

“No, it’s just, I need to know if I have to jump in to save you if you fall off the rocks.”

“Oh. We’re going over the rocks. I didn’t know there was anything past them. But, uh, yeah, I can swim, don’t worry about me,” he says.

“Great,” Gerry starts, stepping up onto the first rock. “I would give you a piggy-back but I don’t know if that would work with your height.”

“Not with that attitude it wouldn’t,” Michael retorts. Gerry nearly loses his balance laughing, giddy at having finally found Michael again, this time with a new and improved sense of humour.

As they pick their way across the rocks, it doesn’t appear like there’s anything beyond it but sea and cliff, until they round a particularly tall and wide stone, hardly a foot away from the edge of the outcropping, and a short stretch of beach comes into view, completely cut off and unoccupied.

“How’d you find this?” Michael asks, jumping off the rocks and surveying the small space.

“I have my ways,” Gerry replies, still trying to maintain his mystery.

They sit against the sandy stone of the cliff face and breathe in the smell of salty air and rotten seaweed. There is absolutely no wind in the alcove, giving the water ample opportunity to stink up the air. Gerry digs a joint out of his bag and sticks it between his lips. He lights it and pretends not to notice Michael shuffling closer, watching curiously.

“Is that weed?” He asks hesitantly.

“Yeah. It’s way better shit than what I gave your mates. That stuff was basically oregano except you can’t use it in Italian food.”

Michael laughs loudly, and it is the absolute best sound that Gerry has ever heard. “Yeah, Marcus isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Don’t tell him I said that, though.”

Gerry holds the joint toward Michael, and he takes it slowly, looking uncertainly into Gerry’s eyes. He puts it to his lips and inhales deeply. He pulls it away sharply and coughs into his elbow but comes up laughing. They smoke for a while, watching the waves and the grey sky and chatting idly. Mostly they just sit silently, and Michael takes his shoes off to dig his bare toes into the sand.

He looks at Gerry and giggles, high as a kite, “Gerry this whole eyeliner thing you’ve got going on is really hot.” He drags the ‘really’ out for an unnecessarily long time. Gerry grins and watches Michael’s gaze drop down to Gerry’s mouth as he bites his own bottom lip.

“You are that kid that helped me, right?” Michael says, trailing his eyes over Gerry’s shoulders, “When I was 11?”

“That or there’s two blonde, gap-toothed ‘Michael’s in this town,” Gerry replies.

“Hey, I’m very self-conscious about my teeth,” Michael pouts, resting his head on his knees.

“Don’t be,” Gerry says, “It’s cute.”

Michael laughs again but is too stoned to blush. “Did I ever tell you about the time I tried to adopt a homeless kid when I was 6?”

Gerry chuckles and leans back against the rock, “Of course not, we’ve only met three times.” He lets Michael tell the story.

“Mum brings it up at every Christmas, when the whole family’s down. She says that I found an orphan boy at the park and I took him home and cried when she said I couldn’t keep him. She said she drove him down to the police station and they- she and a cop- had to pry me and that kid apart.”

Gerry nods, “Almost. She didn’t drive us anywhere, though.”

“You were there?” Michael asks, confused, then his eyes light up, “Wait, wait, hold on. That kid’s name was Gerry. Fuuuck, that’s your name!”

“Yeah, it is!” Gerry enthuses back, waiting for him to catch on.

“Wait, I got it, wait,” Michael says, eyes scrunched closed and hands moving in the air, like he’s conducting a very complicated spell. His eyes pop open, “It was you!”

“Sure was,” Gerry says grinning at the look on Michael’s face.

“That’s so weird, Gerry. God, you’ve caused a lot of trouble for me. Do you know how much shit I get for trying to keep a homeless kid? Do you know? They bring it up, every Christmas, without fail. I don’t- I don’t even remember it that well. Wow, who would’a thought, that the same boy I tried to adopt when I was 6, comes back years later to trigger my sexual awakening.”

“What?” Gerry asks, sitting forward.

Michael nods in a manner that he probably thinks is serious, “Yep. They may have called me a queer before that, but I didn’t know they were right until that day when you showed up out’a nowhere and punched Clyde in the face.” He pauses then asks with a frown, “Are you really homeless?” 

Gerry blinks rapidly, trying to get his smoke addled brain to keep up with what Michael is telling him, what he’s asking, “Uh, no I was never homeless. I mean I live with my mum but it’s more of a hell than a home… Did you just say sexual awakening?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Michael pats Gerry’s knee consolingly. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“No, I don’t, uh-.”

“Can I kiss you instead, then?” Michael asks, eyes dropping again to Gerry’s mouth.

“Uh…” Gerry’s brain short-circuits. Had he heard that right? Michael wants to kiss him? “Well, um, you’ll probably get lipstick on your face, it’ll probably look pretty suspicious?”

Michael sticks an open hand out toward the sea, “Well there’s a whole lotta water to wash it off, so Wha’dya say?”

“Fuck, okay,” Gerry says, tilting forward to take Michael’s face in his hands. His skin is warm against Gerry’s cold fingers and his eyelashes are long and golden as Michael looks down to focus on the task at hand. He presses forward to bring their lips together. It’s awkward and not very good, as far as kisses go, but to them, it’s a revelation. 

Michael’s lips are warm and chapped, and his hands are slender and gentle as they flutter hesitantly toward Gerry’s face. They land on his neck and drift forward, around Gerry’s shoulders, to bring their bodies close together. Michael tastes like weed, and there’s probably a little too much tongue involved, but Gerry cannot care about that right now because Michael is _kissing_ him!

Gerry’s hands slide up into Michael’s loose curls, and he revels in the feel of the small noise Michael emits against his lips. Michael presses even closer, swinging his legs over Gerry’s and turning into him. Gerry allows a hand to wander down and grip the outside of Michael’s thigh, tugging him forward so he’s almost in Gerry’s lap. Michael stops trying to suffocate Gerry with his tongue for a moment so that he can suck on his bottom lip, scraping his teeth over it gently before Gerry pulls him back in to kiss him deeply.

They pull away from each other after an indeterminate amount of time. Michael’s whole mouth area is stained grey by Gerry’s dark lipstick. Michael giggles and plays with Gerry’s hair where his arms still hang around his shoulders.

“You’ve got lipstick on your face,” Gerry mumbles, letting his arms sink down to rest around Michael’s waist.

“Mhmm,” Michael hums, “I don’t care. Because I’m high as fuck and I haven’t ever felt this good in my life.”

“Why not?” Gerry says.

Michael laughs, but there’s something not quite right about the sound, “Because I’m gay, and my parents are the most homophobic people alive, silly.”

Gerry drops his forehead against Michael’s shoulder and breathes out a sigh, “I’m so sorry, Michael.”

“It’s not your fault!” Michael says, then pauses, “Well, actually, yeah, it kind of is.”

Gerry lifts his head to look in Michael’s eyes, so close and bright, accompanied by a cheeky grin. “Gerry I never knew anyone could feel like this until I met you.”

Gerry frowns, “Feel how?”

Michael’s smile shrinks, but doesn’t dim, “Feel right. Like I’m not… wrong; unnatural. Feel… home.”

Gerry blinks, eyes watery with unexpected tears, and he rests his head on Michael’s shoulder again, leaning against the rock and looking out across the waves. “I feel it too.” Michael doesn’t answer, instead resting his head against Gerry’s and swirling the tips of his fingers against his arm. It’s a little warmer in the alcove, and Gerry finds himself almost drifting to sleep against Michael, until the silence is broken.

“Did you ever see that movie, _Dog Day Afternoon?_ ” Michael says gently, speaking into Gerry’s hair.

“No?”

“My Dad was watching it the other week, cos Al Pacino is in it. It’s about these two guys who rob a bank. Then, later, it’s revealed that they did it to pay for a sex reassignment surgery for one of their wives, cos she’s a transgender woman. Dad turned it off as soon as that happened, but… Do you know anything about that?”

“About what? Trans people?” Gerry asks, a little confused.

“Yeah… I guess,” Michael says, picking at a loose thread on his jeans.

“I mean… I don’t know if I know any, but I don’t know a lot of people anyway. I know it must be hard, to tell the world about it.”

“You might,” Michael says. Gerry can feel him trembling slightly under his ear.

“Might what?”

“Might know one. I don’t know! I just… it feels a little silly, doesn’t it? Gender being such a huge deal? If it isn’t defined by the physical, how can it be defined at all?” Michael’s voice pitches higher and higher until he cuts himself off, hand clenched in a fist on his thigh.

“Are you trying to tell me you’re trans, Michael?” Gerry sits up and tries his best to look reassuring as he searches Michael’s anxious eyes.

“No, I just… Why can’t I just be a person? If how we were born really doesn’t matter, why do labels exist in the first place?” Michael says, sounding increasingly distressed.

Gerry nods considerately and places a tentative on Michael’s until it relaxes, and he winds their fingers together. “I think maybe, it’s what each person makes it. Everyone is in charge of their own gender, and if you don’t want one, that’s probably okay, too.”

“Oh,” Michael says, looking down with a slight frown between his eyes. “I think… I think I don’t want one.” He finishes decisively.

“Cool,” Gerry smiles, “you should join me.”

“For what?” Michael says, looking at their joined hands.

“In my quest to kill gender,” He pauses as Michael laughs, “I’m going to hunt it down, and put it’s head on a spike outside my house.”

“I’ll be there,” Michael chuckles, tugging Gerry in to kiss him on the cheek. “Also, I’m going to need you to walk me back, cos I can’t remember how to get there.”

Gerry laughs and revels in the feel of Michael’s lips against his face, something he was sure he’d never feel again. After a couple hours spent free in each other’s company, leaning against the sandy cliff and watching the rolling waves, they make their way back towards the outcropping of rocks.

“Wait, wait!” Gerry says, tugging Michael back as he steps onto a rock.

Michael stumbles back and lets Gerry drag him over to the water’s edge. Gerry dips his hands in the water and reaches up to scrub at Michael’s mouth, rubbing away the last traces of Gerry’s dark lipstick. “But what if I want to kiss you again?” Michael says.

Gerry swipes his hands back through the water and scrubs at his own face until his lips are pale and chapped. Michael glances towards the rocks then pulls Gerry into a kiss, tasting like briny water and salty skin.

Gerry leads him carefully back over the rocks, holding his hands until they are in sight of the beach, before dropping them. Once back on solid ground, they keep a respectable distance between them as they make their way back to the park. It isn’t quite dark, but the sky is turning a pleasant array of pinks and purples. This side of the cliff face, a stiff wind is picking up, and Gerry wants nothing more than to walk close beside Michael, feeling his warmth for as long as he can before he has to eventually leave again.

Gerry is hyper aware of how it might look for a sweet local boy like Michael to be hanging around with a gothic vagrant, and so keeps his distance.

Michael clears his throat, “What’s your last name? You know, if I need to find you in the phone book or something?”

Gerry smiles, charmed by the idea of Michael combing through the yellow pages to find one Gerard Keay. He doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he definitely won’t be in the phone book. “Keay.”

“K-E-Y?”

“-E-A-Y. And you?”

“Shelley,” he laughs, “It’s weird, that we didn’t know that. I mean, it’s obvious, because we’ve only met twice-.”

“Three times.”

“Three times, so it makes sense that we didn’t know, but it feels weird, right? To not know that? You know what I’m trying to say, right?”

“Yeah, Michael, I do,” he says, just as they arrive back at the spot that he’d sold Marcus the weed.

“I should probably be going, or Mum’ll start asking questions,” Michael says, biting his lip, but not willing to leave.

Gerry glances around before taking Michael’s hands in the cover of the tree, looking up into his soft grey eyes. The first thing that springs to Gerry’s lips is ‘Fuck I’m going to miss you,’ sure that this will be the last time he sees him for another few years. He doesn’t say that. Instead he says, “You’re probably sober now, right?”

Michael giggles, nodding.

“Do you… still want to kiss me?” He says, edging closer into Michael’s personal space.

Michael peeks out toward the footpath before stepping right up to Gerry and kissing him soundly on the lips. This kiss is different. Neither of them tastes very good, but it feels more real. Gerry can feel the soft glide of Michael’s smooth lips against his own. The heat of his tongue as it swipes, over eager, at the seam of his mouth, and the warm gust of air expelled from him as they break apart.

Michael gently knocks his forehead against Gerry’s, smiling a big goofy grin. “I’ll see you again?”

“I sure fucking hope so,” Gerry says, running his thumbs once, twice, over Michael’s knuckles.

Michael looks down at their hands, then up into Gerry’s eyes. After a long moment of just gazing, tender and soft, he lets go, and turns away.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be clear, I’ve tried to build a discussion on Gender that stays true to my belief that gender roles are bullshit, while gender identity is as important as each individual makes it for themselves, while also making it realistic from the perspective of two young questioning kids in the late 90’s, who haven’t been very exposed to the transgender community.  
> Let me know what you think and thanks for reading ;0


	4. 2000

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An end to a shitty day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for underage drinking I guess, but that happens off screen.

That was not the last time he saw Michael for the next few years. Gerry had come home from the park late that Saturday and had been unable to hide the glow in his eyes. He had just seen Michael again. The improbability of never finding him again had been beaten, over and over. It had been years, and they had finally come together once more. Surely that was some kind of proof? He doesn’t really know of what, but it’s got to be of something, right? Maybe they are just meant to find each other, against all odds, time after time.

Face awash with barely hidden joy, Gerry had come back to the hotel room, and was greeted by Mary’s cold and calculating gaze as she poured over several documents spread out in front of her, along with a Leitner. Gerry avoids looking at her whole side of the room.

“Where have you been?” she asks, a terrifying hint of knowing in her voice.

“Just haunting the streets, Mary, you know how it goes,” he takes off his shoes and continues not looking at her.

She doesn’t answer him, and instead opens a few more files. She doesn’t stop reading until nearly midnight, the glow of her lamp keeping Gerry awake.

Gerry sees Michael the next day. Michael had looked as ecstatic as Gerry felt that they had seen each other twice in a row, without the customary years of time between. They had spent the day together, finding it increasingly difficult to find spaces that they could be alone, given it was an unexpectedly warm day, and the beach was littered with people. Gerry had only got to kiss Michael once, when they said goodbye.

It wasn’t a tearful goodbye, why would it be? They thought they had found their time.

Gerry went home that night to find Mary ignoring him, and still pouring over her notes like her life depended on it. Gerry began to grow begrudgingly concerned that it just might. His worry was for nothing, however, as he woke the next day to find Mary standing above him. She’d told them that she had finished her business in South Telschin, and they’d be leaving immediately.

That’s what all that studious work had been: Mary rushing to get out of the coastal town, because she had seen that it was making Gerry happy. We can’t have Gerry happy, now can we?

Gerry is eighteen years old now. He lives on his own in London, stealing from Mary and trading dangerous artefacts to keep his shitty flat while hunting Leitners with the best of them. Mary hadn’t tried to find him when he finally moved out but maintained an iron grip on him anyway. Gerry would find himself walking toward Pinhole books, seeking that look in her eyes when he’d hand it over, only to realise what he was doing and resolutely burn the Leitner in the next alleyway. One of the only proper freedoms he has now is that Mary won’t yank on all his new piercings.

He keeps the shell Michael had given him on his bedside table, and this time, the memory sticks around a little longer. His mind isn’t infallible however, and more than once he finds himself losing details of Michael’s face. He actually sends himself into a panic when he looks at that shell one day and can’t quite picture the shade of his eyes.

Gerry has just had a tough day, so he’s at his favourite bar, intending to get shit faced before stumbling home and hoping he doesn’t choke on his own vomit when he passes out on the couch. The bartender knows him here. Gerry likes him- tall and blond, with a slow smile. Gerry tells himself it’s because he never noticed that he’d been ‘18’ for a couple of years now, and not because he ticks two of three criteria on Gerry’s ‘hot or not’ list (the criteria being: Tall, Blond, Michael).

Gerry orders a rum and coke before heading toward his usual booth at the back, an inconspicuous corner which allows him to people watch without being too obviously sketchy. He’s almost there when he’s grabbed around the wrist and pulled backward slightly. Some of his drink sloshes over onto the arm of his leather jacket and he turns around, ready to clock whoever had just put a hand on him. It takes a long moment for him to recognise the ratty-looking prep from South Telschin; Marcus.

The guy doesn’t look anywhere near old enough to be in this bar. Maybe it hadn’t been the convincing bags under Gerry’s eyes that had kept him from getting kicked out. Maybe it was just a shitty bar. He’s holding his hands up, half in fear and half in a placating gesture, as he starts to talk.

“Hey, mate, sorry, just thought you were some guy who sold me shitty weed a few years ago,” he looks awkwardly at his drink, clearly hoping this big scary goth man will forget about his misstep and leave him alone.

No chance. Like I said, Gerry has had a shit day. “You know what? I think I fucking did, so what are you going to do about it?”

The kid begins to blabber in a manner that tries to be apologetic and humbling but misses the mark. Gerry isn’t listening anyway; he’s just remembered something. He had sold some shitty weed to this little gremlin, then Michael had been there. Michael was friends with this guy.

Gerry looks over the group, about 7 people large. They are all avoiding his eyes, save for one blonde sitting at the back, looking awed and breathless. He stands up hastily, and nearly hits his head on a wooden beam above the table. He’s even taller than he had been when Gerry last saw him but now he’s almost grown into it, shoulders filled out and legs looking like they could actually support his weight. He’s wearing a pink cropped shirt under a loose flannel and a bright yellow raincoat. Gerry can see a little glimmer of a gem stuck through his belly button.

Gerry has completely forgotten about Marcus and his ramblings and is instead just watching as Michael edges out of his position by the wall with various mumbled ‘sorry’s. Finally, Michael is standing in front of him, face red, speechless. Gerry feels the same. “Hi,” Michael says on an out-breath.

Gerry blinks, feeling a pleasant chill run down his spine at the sound of Michael’s voice. “Hi.”

Michael’s face splits in a toothy grin, and he grabs Gerry’s hand, tugging him toward the back of the bar, and shoves open the emergency exit. Suddenly they’re enveloped in chilly air and bad smells behind the bar in a soggy alleyway. Standing at his full height, Michael is so much taller than he had been before. He had had a couple inches on Gerry years ago. Now he’s towering at least half a foot over him. The sprinkling of freckles across his nose are faint, but still there. His hair is up in a messy bun, a few wayward curls twisting around his ears. His eyes are just as Gerry remembered, and he can’t help but sink into them as his hands drift up to hang on Michael’s shirt.

“Do you ever stop growing?” Gerry asks, and enjoys the sound of Michael’s laugh more than is probably reasonable.

Michael cups Gerry’s face in his warm hands and leans forward. Just before their lips connect, he whispers, “I found you.” Michael is smooth and warm as he gathers Gerry in his arms and presses him against a wall, breathing shakily against his mouth. Gerry lets loose an involuntary sigh and welcomes Michael’s tongue as his mouth falls open. The material of Michael’s raincoat crinkles as Gerry bunches his hands into fists at Michael’s shoulders.

Michael’s fingers are wrapped in Gerry’s hair, and don’t seem to be letting go anytime soon as Gerry crushes himself against Michael as hard as he can, hands grasping at anything he can get a hold on to bring Michael closer. It’s a little hard to press your whole body against someone way taller than you when you’re also trying to kiss them. Gerry trails away from Michael’s mouth, instead peppering kisses across his jaw and dipping lower to suck on the skin of his throat.

Gerry drops his hands to Michael’s waist, feeling the muscles under his fingers jump as he skims up, against exposed skin, dragging his nails over Michael’s spine. Michael shivers and gasps. He tugs Gerry’s head back up to meet his, diving in to close his mouth around Gerry’s lip ring. Gerry grunts, still trying in vain to pull him closer. 

Michael lets go, eyes closed, and leans his forehead against Gerry’s temple, panting hot, sweet-scented breath across his flushed cheeks. 

“Michael, you aren’t drunk, are you?” Gerry asks, suddenly worried he’s taken advantage of him.

Michael shakes his head, and unwraps his hands from Gerry’s hair, slinging them around his shoulders instead, “I’m only two ciders in.”

“Thought you’d be more of a cocktail guy,” Gerry says, leaving his hands where they are, splayed against the small of Michael’s back.

Michael groans, “Yes, but they’re so expensive.”

Gerry leans forward to kiss him again, but Michael stops him with a hand on his chest. Gerry looks up into Michael’s eyes, unsure if he’d overstepped somewhere. Michael is barely suppressing a devilish smile, “My parents aren’t home.”

Gerry’s heart skips a beat, frozen at the prospect of being somewhere warm and dry and alone with Michael. “Are you sure you aren’t drunk?”

Michael laughs, a beautiful soul-restoring sound. “You think so low of yourself that I’d have to be drunk to take you home?”

“No, I mean, I’m sexy as hell, it’s just that I don’t want you to rush in to something just because we haven’t seen each other for years.”

Michael smiles, eyes crinkling at the edges, and takes Gerry’s hand, pulling him out of the alley and down the street. “Since when did you move back to London?” Gerry asks.

“About a year ago, I think,” he says, lacing his fingers between Gerry’s. Gerry feels something cold against his hand and looks down to see rings on his fingers.

“Did Marcus move with you, or…?”

“Oh, he and the others are up here for a concert and wanted to catch up.”

“Cool, uh… Michael you have a ring on your marriage finger,” Gerry states, somewhat obviously.

“Oh, yeah, I have a fake girlfriend, Julie. She’s really cool, you’d like her,” Michael says, smiling and swinging their hands as they walk.

“You have a beard? Why do you need a ring for that?” Gerry says insistently.

Michael smiles, and cheekily jostles Gerry with his elbow, “Is somebody jealous?”

“No! I-,” Gerry blushes, “Okay, first of all, shut up. Second of all, why do you need a ring? Are you engaged?”

“We got ‘engaged’,” he says with air quotes, eyeing Gerry with a plaintive expression, “because if my parents didn’t see that I was in a serious relationship with a girl, they were going to kick me out for being a giant homo.”

“Oh,” Gerry looks away, kicking himself for having pressed so far, “I’m so sorry, Michael.”

Michael shakes his head with a smile and pulls them both to a stop outside a quaint little town house. “I only have to fake it for another two years before I’m off to college. Besides, what’s life without a little bit of trauma, huh?”

“Now that can’t be a healthy outlook,” Gerry says, raising his eyebrows pointedly.

Michael snorts out a laugh and tugs him around to a gate beside the house. Through the gate Michael pauses and points upward to the second storey. “See that?” he asks, “That’s my bedroom window.”

“Okay…” Gerry says, watching Michael curiously as he steps up to the wall.

“And see this?” Michael says, laying his hands dramatically against a wooden lattice structure, a solid part of the wall’s construction, built in to provide a surface for decorative vine to grow up. “This is very easy to climb,” he finishes with a showy wink.

“Oh, I see,” Gerry says with a laugh. “Can we go inside now?”

Michael wiggles his eyebrows and takes Gerry’s hand again, leading him inside and up a narrow staircase. It’s kind of dark inside Michael’s room, the sun isn’t setting in view of his window, so he turns the light on, shedding his raincoat and shoes.

Gerry steps into his space and tugs him down to plant a kiss on his lips. Michael’s lips are soft and warm, if a little chapped from the cold, and he kisses slowly, with less haste than before. Alone in a warm house, they’ve got all the time in the world. Michael pushes Gerry’s jacket off of his shoulders, gently trailing his long fingers down Gerry’s arms, digging into the muscle there. He breaks away with a soft smack, “You’re not some skinny kid anymore.”

Gerry hums and presses a slow kiss to his lips to distract him, before picking Michael up by the back of his thighs and swinging him toward the bed crammed into the corner of the room, below a sloping ceiling. Michael squeals as he hits the mattress and Gerry crawls over him.

Gerry sits back and kicks off his boots before fitting himself on top of Michael, peppering kisses down on his face as he giggles and swats at him playfully. Gerry kisses him square on the lips and Michael melts into it, humming low in his chest as he takes a hold of the hem of Gerry’s shirt. Michael pushes up to sitting and looks at Gerry questioningly. At Gerry’s nod, Michael pulls his shirt up and over his head, before pushing him down on the bed and mouthing at his throat, working his way up to Gerry’s ear.

Michael’s hands are flat against Gerry’s chest, not shying away from brushing over his nipples. Michael takes Gerry’s earlobe into his mouth, teeth catching on the rings of metal. Gerry moans as Michael’s tongue flicks over the sensitive skin behind his ear.

Gerry runs his hands up Michael’s back, then deftly pulls the hair tie out of Michael’s hair, letting the mass of blond curls tumble free across his shoulders, shrouding their faces in a curtain of gold. Michael pulls away, swinging a leg over Gerry’s hips, and sits up. His head collides with the sloped ceiling.

“Fuck!” he curses.

“Shit! You alright?” Gerry says, sitting up as well.

Michael nods, wincing, “Yeah, yeah, switch.” Michael lays on his back, head against a mountain of pillows, and pulls Gerry down on top of him. Gerry kisses him soundly, positioning his legs so they sit comfortably around Gerry’s waist, and rubs his hands idly over Michael’s bare sides.

“Are you 18?” Gerry asks, pulling back slightly to look in Michael’s eyes, pupils blown wide.

Michael groans, tipping his head back, “You aren’t worried about that, are you?”

“No, it’s just, I thought I was older than you, but you were in that bar, so…” Gerry tucks his hair behind his ear and looks down at Michael.

Michael rolls his eyes and smiles abashedly. “I’ll be 18 in May. I used a fake ID.”

Gerry grins mischievously, “What’s the name on your fake ID?”

Michael sighs, shaking his head with a raging blush, “It’s Michael Keay. Are you happy now?”

Gerry hums and continues kissing him. Michael is more than eager to follow suit. Gerry mouths a series of wet kisses down Michael’s throat, and drinks in all the breathy sounds that Michael makes as he tugs at Gerry’s hair. Gerry pushes Michael’s crop top up around his collarbone and scrapes his teeth down his sternum, licking a hot line across to a peaked nipple and sucking it into his mouth. Michael whines loudly and pitches his hips up into Gerry’s abdomen. Gerry can feel his own arousal building and pooling low in his gut. 

He swirls his tongue lower across Michael’s warm skin and dips into his belly button, the glimmer he’d caught earlier indeed being a piercing. Michael’s breath catches and he swears as Gerry tugs on it with his teeth. Gerry looks up at Michael. His eyes are heavy lidded, and his kissed-pink mouth is hanging open. His eyebrows are pinched up with need as he absently tugs at Gerry hair and twirls a lock around his finger.

Gerry continues lower, bringing a hand up to tease at his inner thigh while still kissing lightly toward his belt buckle. It takes only a short moment to realise Michael has gone completely still, no longer pushing up into Gerry’s touch.

Gerry looks up, worried that he might have hurt him, or made him uncomfortable. Michael’s face is erased of nearly all signs of arousal, save for the strong blush coloring his cheeks, and his eyes are alert, yet distant.

“Michael, wha-.”

“Sh! Did you hear…?”

Gerry listens closely, for any sounds whatsoever. There are the faint sounds of cars honking, and sloshing through puddles on the soggy road, but nothing that might be any cause for alarm until… the sound of a car door closing, and two muffled voices.

Michael’s eyes widen, and he starts to shove at Gerry’s shoulders, “My parents! My parents, fucking hell, they were supposed to be out late.”

Gerry sits back and casts around for his shirt. He finds it, along with his jacket, and scoops it up. He goes toward the window, uncertain about how to make it to the ground with the sky so dark, and the air so cold. Michael grabs him by the shoulders.

“Bed, under, get under!” they can hear the sounds of footsteps climbing the stairs, unmistakably heading toward Michael’s room. Gerry squeezes himself under the bed with his clothes bundled in his arms, and Michael hastily throws his sheets over the side of his bed, to obscure whatever might be visible of Gerry, before grabbing a book and doing his best to pretend to read it.

The door opens, and more light spills in from the hallway. “Hi, sweetie, I thought you’d be out all night? Your father and I were going to see a movie, but we couldn’t decide on anything, so we came home.” This must be Michael’s mum. Her voice is pleasant enough, but not at all how Gerry remembers it. 

“Yeah, I really wanted to catch up with the guys, but I remembered I have a test tomorrow that I really need to study for, so I came back early,” Michael says, doing a remarkable job at sounding just a little disappointed, and even a little weary.

“Oh, how good of you, honey. Well, I’m sure you’ll see them again soon,” she says, sounding legitimately proud.

“Yeah, I hope so.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Uh, yeah, we grabbed some fish and chips before I left,” Michael says, an edge of stress beginning to enter his voice. Gerry wills him to keep it together for just a little longer.

“Oh, good! Well, goodnight, the- oh, who’s shoes are these?”

Gerry freezes as Michael’s mother’s face comes into view for a brief moment as she picks up his boots. She straightens, and Gerry continues to hold his breath.

“They’re Ted’s. He left them here when he came over the other day,” Gerry silently wonders at the frighteningly sincere nonchalance in Michael’s voice as he lies.

“I’ll go put them on the shoe rack downstairs, then. Goodnight, Michael,” she says, before closing the door.

Gerry hears the thump of a book landing on the nightstand before Michael’s face appears upside down over the side of the bed. “Oh. My. God.” He whispers, gesturing for Gerry to come out.

He wiggles out and joins Michael on the bed, where they both try to stifle hysterical giggles. Gerry tugs his shirt back on and lets the giggles subside, leaning his forehead against Michael’s shoulder. His shoulders are shaking. It takes a minute for Gerry to notice that it isn’t with laughter. He looks up to see Michael’s eyes filled with tears, chest heaving as he tries to contain his shuddering sobs with a hand over his mouth.

“Woah, hey, it’s alright,” Gerry says, scooting forward and bringing an arm around Michael’s shoulder. “She didn’t catch us.”

Michael turns into Gerry’s shoulder and shudders, almost silent. Gerry knows he’s still crying, but only from the wetness seeping into his shirt. Gerry’s heart breaks to think about how Michael became so adept at crying so quietly. “What if she did?” Michael whispers, voice raw.

Gerry doesn’t say anything, and instead squeezes Michael tighter against him as he leaves a growing stain on his shoulder. He combs a hand through his hair and drags his nails in light circles on the small of his back, doing his best to calm him while his chest heaves in and out rapidly.

It’s almost an hour before Michael is still against him. The sky outside is completely dark, and the warm orange light of a streetlamp pools in through the window. An hour of Michael clutching so hard on Gerry’s shirt, he was sure it would rip.

Michael finally pulls back and sniffs wetly, rubbing the tears off his face and not looking at Gerry. Gerry still has his arms around him and isn’t planning on letting go unless Michael wants him to. He puts a finger under Michael’s chin and turns his face toward him.

“How bad would it be? If she had seen us?” Gerry asks gently.

Michael doesn’t look upset at the question. He doesn’t look like he’s going to start crying again. He just looks unshakeably sad. “She tells my dad everything. She would try to keep it to herself, but she would tell him, if she saw us, and, uh, I would be kicked out. I would become as much of a stranger to them as you are.”

Gerry drops a kiss on Michael’s shoulder, and does his best to comfort him physically.

Unprompted, Michael whispers, barely audible, “I don’t even want to think about what my dad would do.”

Gerry doesn’t trust himself to say the right thing but tries anyway. “I’m sure they love you, somewhere inside them.” 

Gerry watches, mad at himself for his choice of words as Michael’s face crumbles and fresh tears gather in his eyes. “They love what they think I am. What I would be if they took all the things about me that they hate and threw them away. It kills me, that. That, uh,” Michael blinks hard, trying to dispel the tears, “That those are the best parts of myself. If that were gone, I wouldn’t be me. They don’t love me. Love doesn’t feel like this.”

Gerry doesn’t answer, gently slipping his fingers between Michael’s in leu of talking. Michael is hurting. It’s plain on his face and Gerry has no idea how to fix it. Gerry pictures Michael’s parents, hazy as the image may be, and pictures Mary, trying to reconcile them with each other. So outwardly different. Both so capable of causing pain. Gerry of all people should know that fear comes in all shapes.

“I’m sorry, Gerry,” Michael says, leaning his head against his, and sighing quietly.

“Sorry about what?” he pulls Michael further to him, cuddling him closer and trying his best to convey his love through contact.

“I ruined such a sexy night we were having. And she took your boots,” he says, tone coloured with humour. Gerry’s heart lifts to hear it, even if the content doesn’t make sense.

“Not your fault you have shitty parents, Michael,” Gerry says, pressing a kiss to his temple. “In fact, I’m the one who should be sorry.”

Michael frowns, leaning into the touch, “What do you mean?”

“I’m sorry that I’m so irresistible that you just had to get me in bed at any cost.” Michael stifles a laugh with a snort and hits Gerry playfully, “Also… I have an apartment that we totally could’ve gone to, but I- my brain short-circuited when I saw you, because you’re so fucking beautiful.”

Michael blushes, and puts a finger on his chin like he’s deep in thought, “So what you’re saying is… it is actually my fault?” Gerry tips his head back exasperatedly, and Michael falls against him, laughing silently.

Michael quietens and begins to run his fingers over Gerry’s throat, bringing them up to skirt down his jaw and run along the bridge of his nose. Michael continues mapping Gerry’s face with his touch, fingertips swirling around his various piercings, fairy-light across his eyelids, watching the path of his finger intently.

“What are you doing?” Gerry says, hypnotized by the soft touch.

“This is what love feels like,” He explains, laying his hand along Gerry’s jaw, and kissing him, achingly tender. Gerry doesn’t close his eyes, instead choosing to watch Michael’s flutter closed, shadow of his golden lashes fanning out over his flushed cheeks.

Gerry’s heart breaks and mends itself all over again, tasting the salty tears dried on Michael’s lips. It’s a fair few minutes before Michael pulls back.

“Can I have your cell phone number?”

Gerry’s heart skips a beat at the idea of being able to call Michael any time. That Michael is in London, and that they’ve found each other again. He scribbles down his number on a scrap of paper and tucks it into the pocket of Michael’s shirt. “Do you want me to leave now?”

Michael doesn’t answer for a while. “Can you stay until I fall asleep?”

Gerry shuffles down on the bed so that he’s lying against a pillow. Michael shuffles under the sheets and tucks his head under Gerry’s chin, curling his legs up so that they don’t hang over the edge. Gerry lies with Michael patiently, running his fingers slowly through Michael’s soft curls and fighting sleep off with every ounce of energy he has. 

Eventually Michael’s breathing evens out, and Gerry eases himself out of Michael’s arms and slips away through the window. He only remembers that Michael’s mum took his fucking shoes as his toes land on the slimy greenery on the outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canonical scrawny Gerry just ain't where it's at folks.


	5. 2002

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been a good couple years. Are they pushing their luck?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set kind of around the canonical events of MAG 35  
> Also I don’t wanna deal with Mary any more so as of now she has attempted to bind herself to the skin book and failed miserably, dying like a normal person and leaving Gerry in peace.
> 
> Prepare >: )

Gerry is burning a Leitner. As far as finding them goes, this one hadn’t been too difficult, especially with the two construction workers already down there, more than equipped to break through the wall. Gerry hadn’t really stuck around to see what became of the man who he had heard scream and fall behind him, but he doesn’t let himself feel too guilty about his potential death; much worse was sure to happen if he hadn’t been there.

He’d ran out quick and found the nearest vacant alley to burn the thing in, not willing to wait any longer with such a dangerous item. It burns well, the old dry pages catching quickly and producing pleasing yellow flames. This is Gerry’s favourite part; watching the paper curl, blackened and crumbling, against itself until there’s nothing left but ash, and it can’t hurt any longer.

From the mouth of the alley, a voice reverberates toward him, “Hey, kid, is that what I think it is?”

The man is tall and broad as he approaches, thick hands heavy with ornate rings, and toothy smile riddled with precious metals. Gerry’s hand darts to the knife in his bag, knowing it’s likely to do jack shit against this shiny behemoth. “You mean ‘ _was_ that what you think it _was_ ’.”

He chuckles good-naturedly and extends a bejewelled hand, “Mikaele Silesa. And you are?”

Gerry eyes the hand with open distain, but offers his name in turn, “Gerard Keay.”

The man’s thick eyebrows climb up his forehead as his dark eyes fill with recognition, “Mary’s boy? I’ve heard of you.”

“Yeah? Well I’m not Mary’s anything now; she’s dead,” Gerry aims his middle finger at the ground and says, “Rest in pieces, mum.”

“Not the biggest fan of hers, then? I can respect that, but listen, I know of a fe-.”

“Not a chance, Silesa. If you want someone to find a Leitner for you, I ain’t it. I’m in the burning business, and I will not stand by and watch you use a shitty evil book for your own gain,” Gerry says, taking a step away from the man. Gerry doesn’t believe he’s in any immediate danger, but he knows about Silesa. He knows if he makes a wrong move, it won’t be long before he disappears.

Silesa chuckles, putting a hand against his belly like some kind of anti-Santa. “You are close, Keay, but that’s not _exactly_ what I was trying to ask you. How about we find somewhere more… hospitable,” he raises his hands to indicate their dank surroundings, “and we can talk.”

“I can’t guarantee anything,” Gerry says before following Silesa out of the alley and down the street to a dimly lit bar. Silesa brings them to a dark table in the back corner as Gerry surveys the room for any exits.

“So what do you want from me?” Gerry says, tapping his fingers impatiently against the grimy table.

“Hey, woah, wait a second,” Silesa chuckles, pulling out a cigar from the inside of his coat. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“No,” Gerry replies flatly, even though he had fully intended to get fucked up after burning that Leitner. Maybe later. Or maybe he’d go see Michael.

Silesa holds his hands up in surrender, “Okay, fine. Straight to business, I can appreciate that,” Gerry rolls his eyes as the man continues to dance around the subject. “There’s an… artefact, that I need. It’s in Norway, and it belongs to Isaac Hagen.”

Gerry’s eyes narrow at the name, “He collects Leitners.”

“Yes, he does. He’s managed to collect a sizeable amount, actually, last I’d heard. But I’m not interested in those. I need that artefact.”

Gerry shakes his head, “That guy has people coming at him on all sides for those books, he has more security personnel than the fucking Queen. What makes you think I could get in there?”

Silesa nods, “That’s all very true, but he’s taken a rather big hit recently, and I have reliable intel that says he’s moved to a less secure, and more remote location, with the artefact, and a fair few of his Leitners. He’s completely exposed.”

Gerry takes his time to roll the idea around in his head, then says, “I’ll need funding. I don’t have the means to fuck off to Norway for any amount of time.”

“That’s not a problem,” Silesa says, looking practically gleeful. “I’ll give you whatever you need, you bring me the artefact, and you can do what you want with the books. Do we have a deal?” Silesa holds out a hand.

“Give me a day to think about it?” Gerry asks.

Silesa retracts his hand with barely concealed disappointment, but nods, leaving a contact number on a napkin before heading out. Gerry stays where he is for a moment, considering the offer, before he notices a man tucked away in another corner of the room, staring intently at him.

At first Gerry fully intends to ignore the man, but after several long moments of uninterrupted staring, Gerry can’t put it out of his mind any longer. He approaches the man with open hostility. “Can I help you, old man?”

He blinks slowly at Gerry, looking him over with a strange sort of expression on his face. It’s a mix of sadness and pity, with no small amount of apprehension. “Take a seat, young man. There’s something you should know.” Gerry is taken aback by the low rumble of his voice, and feels compelled to sit, even though he feels he’s testing his luck by sitting down with two different, yet equally sketchy men in one night.

“I was like you, once,” he says, looking down at his drink, brown eyes cloudy with age, once Gerry takes a seat. “Thought I could have the best of both worlds.”

Gerry frowns, “You don’t know me.”

The man ignores him in favour of twirling his glass around with his gnarled fingers. “I worked with Silesa. I was probably a few years older than you.”

“Not a chance- you’re way older than him. And if you’re trying to warn me away from working with him, don’t bother, I know the deal.”

The man shakes his head slowly, smiling half a grimace, “No, no. Silesa is a fair employer. I worked for him, hunting for his trinkets, for years. Sometimes I didn’t work for him. Sometimes I just did what suited me best, week to week, hour to hour. You know the sort of world this is. Dangerous. Old powers, trying to take their grip on us and twist our strings to make the world their own.” The man takes a drink, sighing.

“I had a wife. A wife and a beautiful child. I provided for them, as best I could, taking what I could from this world and using it in theirs, keeping them clothed and fed. Eventually it all bleeds over. What I couldn’t- what I wouldn’t bring home followed me anyway. It-,” the man chokes on a closed throat, fighting a growing mist in his gaze.

Gerry thinks about all he’s done. The Leitners, the Avatars. He’s seen a lot. He fears every day he might be corrupted himself. What would happen, really, if he brought this into the other parts of his life? What if it reached Michael? An involuntary chill runs down Gerry’s spine. He tries not to let is show.

“It… the Dark. It took my wife, and my child. God, Isabelle, she was only five years old. You can’t, do you understand? You can’t live in both. It’s one or the other, sooner or later, you will not be able to maintain the balance. You will lose everything. I see that hope in your eyes, boy.”

Gerry looks down, fiddling with the rings on his fingers. If anything happened to Michael because of him… if anything happened to Michael at all…

“You need to get rid of that hope. Decide where you belong, and fast.”

Gerry stands abruptly, rattling the table. The man steadies his drink and watches forlornly as the young goth leaves the bar.

*

Gerry taps on Michael’s window three times fast, then three times slow, their customary signal, and Michael appears to open it, tugging Gerry in and pulling him into a tight hug. Gerry returns the gesture, wrapping his arms around Michael’s chest and squeezing, enjoying the warmth radiating from the tall blond.

Michael’s hair is loose and messy, having spent the past few hours asleep. He’s wearing a soft sweater and a pair of flannel pyjama pants. He waits for Gerry to take his coat and boots off before leading him into bed.

“You okay?” Michael asks softly, brushing his fingers through Gerry’s hair, long and freshly dyed. “It’s really late, and I didn’t know if you’d come. You didn’t answer my text.”

Gerry presses a kiss to Michael’s cheek and lays his head on his shoulder. “Had a… had a day, today.”

Michael loops his arms around Gerry’s shoulders, hugging him close, “Get into some weird shit, huh? Out in the goth world? The goth gang?”

“Yeah,” Gerry chuckles, “And I told you I’m not in a gang.”

“Sure you aren’t. But until I see proof of that, I’m going to continue making fun of you for it.”

“Okay,” Gerry says, nuzzling into Michael’s shoulder.

“Gerry?” Michael asks, fingers trailing up and down Gerry’s arm.

“Mm?”

“You know I don’t care, about what you do, right? I mean I care, obviously, I just… I don’t mind. As long as you’re, uh, staying healthy, and keeping safe, I don’t mind. I just want you safe.”

Gerry takes a deep, grounding breath. The only thing he wants is for Michael to be safe. That’s the only thing. “I try my best, Michael. I mean, I do work out every day, you’ve seen these guns, right?”

Michael giggles, and Gerry can feel him smiling into his hair. “I mean it, love. You could be the pioneer of a new modern gang movement, and I would not give a shit, as long as you wear a bullet proof vest. And a helmet.”

“Oh, yeah, I’d look very intimidating wearing a fucking helmet to all my top-secret gang meetings.”

“You could put studs on it, I know how you like those.”

Gerry lifts his head and winks at Michael, “I know how you like them, too.”

Michael snorts, face red in the faint light of the moon, “Okay, shut up.” Gerry drags himself up so that his face is level with Michaels, and kisses him, slow and sweet.

Gerry trails his fingers down Michael’s cheek, watching him reverently as he leans into the touch. Gerry needs Michael alive and safe. He needs it more than he needs to breath. If he has to sacrifice this, it might just be the price that he needs to pay. Although he can’t begin to imagine his life without it.

Gerry drops his head down onto the pillow besides Michael’s and wraps a finger around a corkscrew curl in Michael’s hair. Michael presses a light kiss to Gerry’s temple and pulls the thick duvet up around his shoulders, tucking it around him.

Gerry allows himself to drift off into a warm, dreamless sleep, wrapped tight in Michael’s embrace.

*

Michael is the first thing that Gerry sees when he comes to the following morning. It startles him to find Michael so close to his face, even though this is the usual procession of things when Gerry stays at Michael’s house.

Gerry grunts in surprise, “Good morning, Michael.”

Michael beams, and starts peppering kisses all over Gerry’s face, “Good morning, my beautiful, sexy, goth boyfriend. Guess what?” Gerry is rather impressed he said all that without pausing his onslaught of affections.

“What?” Gerry asks, admittedly charmed by the sheer volume of good spirits flooding from Michael on this very _early_ Sunday morning.

“The folks are at church,” he whispers, “So we can be as loud as we want!” he finishes at a shout.

“Okay,” Gerry laughs and winces, “Let’s not be that loud, though.”

“And…” Michael says, biting his lip and vibrating with excitement, “It’s your birthday tomorrow, so you get half of your present today, since I’ll be at work tomorrow morning.”

“Why does it have to be in the morning?” Gerry frowns.

Michael is not bothering to suppress a gleeful grin as he says, “I mean I could give it to you any time, but morning works best because,” Michael slides a hand over the tent in Gerry’s jeans and whispers, “you’re already part way there.”

“Oh, oh, okay, fuck, okay,” Gerry says, face flaming red as Michael makes his way down Gerry’s body, pushing any clothing out of the way and sucking wet kisses into the exposed skin.

Gerry’s blood really starts to pick up speed when Michael deftly undoes his belt and flings it across the room before unzipping Gerry’s pants and pressing the flat of his tongue against the bulge in his underwear. Gerry can’t help but whine and push up into the contact, craving the wet heat.

Michael’s giggle is muffled from under the covers, “Hold your horses, Gerry.” He tries to tug Gerry’s jeans down, only managing to get them to his knees before he gives up. “Gerry as much as these jeans look sexy as all fuck on you, they are a major inhibitor on actually getting to the goods.”

Gerry’s laugh is cut off by Michael’s continued attention. Gerry had always suspected that Michael would be the most vocal in bed, but after nearly two years of stealing lazy Sundays and quick afternoon sessions at Gerry’s before Michael is due back home, Gerry has been embarrassed to find he loses all of his faculties under Michael’s touch.

“Fuck, Michael, god, fuck!” Gerry mumbles a litany of curses and praises as Michael takes him apart with his soft lips and hot tongue. 

“Hey,” Michael says, pulling away abruptly and flipping the covers off of his head, “You shouldn’t take the lord’s name in vain.”

“Are you serious?” Gerry says in an embarrassing whine.

Michael grins cheekily at him and lowers his head once more. Gerry is mesmerized by the flush high on Michael’s face as he plants his fingers in the flesh of Gerry’s inner thigh, scratching softly. He whimpers pathetically and bites down on his arm to contain a shout as he finishes.

Michael pulls off and props his hand up on his chin and gazes at Gerry with a prideful grin. “Are you satisfied with your present? I forgot to get the receipt so you can’t give it back.”

Gerry reaches down to take Michael by the armpits, hauling him up and into his lap. “Not done, yet.”

“Gerry, have I ever told you that your muscles are incredibly sexy?” Michael says, kneading his fingers into the flesh of his arms.

“Hmm, not nearly enough,” Gerry says, and begins to mouth at Michael’s collarbone, running his hands up under his sweater and thumbing over his nipples.

Michael strips off his sweater and moans loudly as Gerry takes a nipple into his mouth and scrapes his teeth over it gently.

“Mm, Gerry, touch me, please,” Michael breathes, letting his head fall back as he buries his fingers in Gerry’s hair.

Gerry obeys immediately, reaching past his loose-fitting pyjama pants, all the while continuing to kiss up and down Michael’s exposed throat. Michael sighs and presses up into him, and Gerry enjoys the weight of him settling across his thighs and in his hands.

Michael leans down to kiss Gerry thoroughly. Gerry can taste himself on his tongue, and swallows Michael’s groans greedily as he continues to pitch up into his hand. Gerry reaches his free hand up and tangles it in Michael’s curls, tugging on the soft strands to elicit a sweet breathy whimper from Michael’s lips.

Michael comes apart easily, panting and whispering sweet nothings into Gerry’s ear and rocking slowly to a stop in his lap. Gerry strokes his fingers down Michael’s spine and leans back down on the mattress with Michael still on top of him. The blond sighs contentedly, trailing his fingertips down Gerry’s throat and kissing him lightly on the jaw.

“I can’t wait to get out of this place,” Michael says.

Gerry turns to look at him, taking in his cloudy grey eyes, bright and intent, and his freckles clear against his pale skin. “Not long now,” Gerry hums, “A month, right?”

“Yeah,” he says with a wistful sigh, “I can finally start being me.”

Gerry smiles and brushes a hand through his hair before kissing him softly. “You deserve this.”

Michael kisses back, so tenderly that Gerry might start to cry. He rolls over Gerry and out of bed. He kisses Gerry once more on the forehead before leaving the room. Gerry can hear the sound of the toilet flushing and water running before Michael comes back in.

“Remind me again why you’re moving all the way to Wales when there are perfectly good schools here in London?”

Michael rifles through his drawers for a clean sweater as he replies, “Because they have a really great Library Science course, and my scholarship covers it, and also my parents don’t live in Wales.”

“What do they think about you moving so far away?” Gerry says, sitting up against the headrest and watching, content, as Michael pulls out various shirts and holds them out before refolding them and returning them to the drawer.

“They think it’s a good opportunity for me to grow as a person. What they don’t know is that I’m actually going to use this time away to become even gayer than before.”

“Do you not remember just a couple of minutes ago? How can you get gayer than that?”

Michael considers this as he pulls on a chunky yellow sweater and starts searching for some pants. “I’ll grow a moustache.”

Gerry’s jaw drops open, “Michael, I love you, but if you grow a moustache, I am never kissing you ever again.”

He giggles, “I’m kidding! Anyway, I think they’ll be glad of me going. I know they’re sick of watching me become a huge disappointment. I mean, they’re really just delaying the inevitable, right? Like, sure I’m still _engaged_ to Julie, but there is absolutely no way they can actually think they’ll be receiving a wedding invitation. They know I’m gay, I’m sure of it. They’re just waiting for me to leave so they can stop looking at the ugly truth every day when it sits down to eat dinner with them. Out of sight, out of mind, you know?”

“And you’ll be fine by yourself?” Gerry says, trying not to sound too protective.

“Better than fine,” Michael beams, wiggling into a pair of jeans. Gerry watches him, his blond curls tangled from sleep and a blush high on his cheeks as he jumps his way into his pants. He is so _young_. And as much as his parents may dislike his ‘lifestyle choices’ he knows they’d be sad to lose him, especially his mother. Gerry’s seen the way she looks at Michael. The painful sadness in her eyes as she knows who her son is and knows she can’t protect him from her husband’s set ways. Losing Michael would kill her, he knows it, and losing Michael would kill Gerry too. 

Gerry decides, watching Michael flit around the room, piecing an outfit together, that Michael will just have to lose him instead. It’s the only option.

He watches and waits patiently until Michael’s back is turned. Then he takes his flip phone from the nightstand and slips it into his coat pocket. Michael turns back around and pulls Gerry up to standing, placing a sweet kiss on his lips. “They’ll be back soon, and I have to go to work. You wanna head out?”

Gerry nods, pulling Michael in close for a hug, soaking in his warmth and allowing himself to enjoy the gently kisses that Michael presses into his hair. Gerry pulls away and opens the window, swinging one leg out.

“You know you can just go through the front door? No one’s down there,” Michael says, smiling fondly.

“Nah, that’s for nerds like you, babe,” Gerry says.

Michael chuckles his beautiful lilting laugh and steps closer to hold Gerry’s face in his hands one last time. Gerry’s gut aches, and he wills his face to stay open and relaxed as he looks into Michael’s soft grey eyes for what he knows will be the final time.

“What have you got planned for today?” Michael asks, stroking his thumbs lightly over Gerry’s cheekbones, unknowingly shattering his heart.

“Just some business, you know how it is. Hey, Michael?” he says, one hand on the window sill and one drifting up to cover Michael’s.

“Yeah?”

“You know I love you, right? I love you more than… more than what I could ever hope to say out loud,” Gerry says, doing an impressive job at keeping his voice steady and his eyes clear.

Michael frowns, but doesn’t stop smiling, tilting his head at the odd question. “I love you, too, Gerry. Obviously,” he rolls his eyes with a cheeky grin, “Is something wrong?”

“No, no, Michael. I just was thinking about how lucky I am to have you,” Gerry says.

“Gerry…” Michael breathes, leaning forward to kiss him, so tender and soft that tears spring to Gerry’s eyes, and he can’t see Michael’s flutter closed through the film. He keeps his eyes closed and leans his forehead against Gerry’s as he says, “I’ll see you after my shift.”

“Yeah,” Gerry says, and swings his other leg out the window and drops to the ground before he can notice the tears slipping down his cheeks.

*

Gerry is down in South Telschin. He’d picked up a cheap bottle of tequila from the nearest bottle shop and took the train down to the coastal town. He’s got Michael’s phone in his pocket, his own, a new one, and the napkin Silesa had left him. He’s down in South Telschin and picking his way across the beach, thinking of the single day he’d spent with Michael here.

He picks his way across the outcropping and briefly considers flinging himself into the water and letting the currents smash him into the rough stone, over and over until he died. He doesn’t. He makes his way to the alcove and sits on the sand with Michael’s phone in his hands, running through the grainy camera roll.

There’s a lot of pictures of Michael’s family cat, and a lot of pictures of Michael’s fake girlfriend, Julie, but by far the most featured person in the photos is Gerry. There’s many of Michael and Gerry, mostly terrible selfies with Michael smashing his face drunkenly against Gerry’s flushed cheeks, with a few sober ones where Michael is beaming into the lens, and Gerry is looking away, face a bashful shade of pink.

He’s about a quarter of the way through the bottle of tequila when he comes across a few that are of Gerry sleeping. “That’s kind of creepy,” he chuckles to himself, fresh tears slipping down his face. There are only a few of those before it’s back to cats and drunk selfies.

He runs his sleeve under his nose and clears his voice a couple of times before dialling the number of his landlord. The call connects after a couple of rings. “Hello?”

“Hi, yeah, this is Gerard Keay from 35A? I won’t be paying next week’s rent. I’ll be out by Tuesday.”

“I, uh, fuck, alright. Anything else?”

“Do you know any other places in East London that might have vacancies in about a month?” Gerry’s voice does sound a little stuffy, but he can’t bring himself to give a shit because he’s in the process of throwing away the only part of his life that mattered to him.

“Uh, yeah, I may know of a few buildings. I could slip the details under your door if you like?”

“That’d be great, thanks,” he says.

“Alright, well, be out by Tuesday,” his landlord says before Gerry hangs up.

Gerry downs another third of the bottle before screwing the cap back on. He stands shakily, stumbling a little, and digs his and Michael’s phones out of his pocket. He feels the weight of them before resolutely smashing them against the cliff face. Once thoroughly mangled, he tosses them into the water with a strangled cry. The water is dark and cold by now, and the unpolluted sky of rural England twinkles down at him as he collapses back onto the sand and cries himself unconscious.

*

Gerry finds his way back to his apartment mid Monday afternoon, having spent an uncomfortable night on a frigid beach and waking up to the tide gently sucking at his boots. He gathers the mail up from just inside the door and dumps it on the kitchen counter before stumbling into the shower to soak the sand out of all his nooks and crannies.

He spends less than 10 minutes sweeping his apartment for what he really needs, dumping it all indiscriminately into a suitcase before going back to the pile of papers. He sifts through the junk mail, throwing most of it in the trash, and pocketing the east London accommodation info, before he finds a small hand written note.

It’s from Michael and it reads:

_Hi, Gerry! I lost my phone! :( I dropped by after my shift on Sunday, but you weren’t here. Dropped by again today, and you still weren’t here! Probably caught up in your secret goth gang stuff, right? I just wanted to say Happy Birthday and I love you, and I hope you aren’t in too much trouble. Don’t forget, I still have another present for you! ;)  
I’ll come by again later, hopefully I’ll find you here. If not, well, we seem to always find our way back to each other eventually, so I’m sure I’ll see you soon. :)  
I love you, Gerry  
Love, Michael. _

Gerry takes a shuddering breath in, forcing the tears down and fighting against the pained cry rising in his throat. He tucks the note gently into a pocket of his suitcase and leaves his London apartment for good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know. comment and kudos if you liked :)


	6. 2011

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unexpected reunion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the end of the last chapter was pretty brutal, so here's a treat.
> 
> Just kidding it's actually more angst.
> 
> tw for referenced abuse.

“Yeah, uh, I’m here to see Gertrude Robinson?” Gerry says to the woman at the front desk of the Magnus Institute, who is wearing an expression of extreme distrust.

“Do you have an appointment?” she asks.

Gerry had been approached by a young redhead at his usual pub the other day, whom he had never seen before. She strode up to him with absolute confidence and told him that a friend of hers would like to speak with him. He had immediately been suspicious; this woman had heat rolling off her in waves and couldn’t have been more Desolation aligned if she struck a match and lit herself on fire. Gerry had the distinct feeling that he was speaking to the Desolation itself; its purest form.

The woman had introduced herself as Agnes Montague and informed him that Gertrude Robinson would like to meet with him. Gertrude Robinson; Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute. Why in God’s name was the Archivist best buds with an avatar of destruction incarnate? Gerry did not enjoy the boiling look in her eyes when he told her to stick it, however, so gingerly accepted the piece of paper she offered him.

It had only Gertrude’s name on it, along with the Institute’s address. The note was warm to the touch, like freshly dried laundry. He looked back up and Agnes was walking calmly out of the bar, the metal handle on the door glowing bright white for a few seconds after her departure.

“Not exactly,” Gerry tells the receptionist.

“Well, then you’ll have to make one, and it might not be today, so…” She starts to say, before another voice, firm and authoritative, cuts her off.

“Gerard Keay?”

Gerry turns to see an old woman, average height and extremely ordinary, hair long past the greying stage and beginning to whiten at her temples. She is modestly dressed, and eyes him over half-moon glasses on a chain around her neck. Gerry gets the feeling like he shouldn’t feel so unimpressed to look at her. Instinctually, he knows that this woman has the potential to be _very_ dangerous to him.

“Yes,” he says. “Are you Gertrude Robinson?”

She nods once, curtly, looking him up and down appraisingly. She gives no indication of what she might have discerned from her analysis, instead gesturing for him to follow her. Gerry starts after her, down a series of darkening hallways and staircases until they come to a dimly lit office, shelves stacked high with books and relics and desk littered with files and boxes.

She shifts a box from the table and takes a seat behind it, waving a hand at the chair before it. Gerry takes it hesitantly.

Gertrude looks him in the eye for a disconcerting amount of time, before saying, “You are Gerard Keay, son of Mary Keay, yes?”

“Oh, God, not this again. She’s fucking _dead_ , okay?” Gerry says, not bothering to hide his abundant distaste, having to speak about his fucking mum, _again_.

Gertrude doesn’t smile at this, but her face betrays no annoyance either. “I understand it must be difficult to speak of her, but there are a few things I need to know.”

Gerry snorts. “What? You want my statement? Yeah, I know what you do here, and you won’t be getting that from me.”

She shakes her head, “No, no. I don’t want your statement. I want what your mother may have left behind.”

“Like all her books and shit?” Gerry says, thinking back to the storage container he had discovered a few years ago, packed wall to wall with dangerous artefacts and old tomes, a few of which were Leitners, which had been particularly troublesome to take care of. 

‘Yes… All her books and shit,” Gertrude says, arching a grey eyebrow.

“A little late for that, I’d say. I burnt it all,” Gerry says, telling the truth. He’d spent more money than was probably reasonable on gasoline to make sure that container went up in flames nice and easy. Come to think of it, it would have been cheaper (and probably more satisfying) to use explosives.

Gertrude’s eyebrows rise slowly up her forehead, “You… burnt it all? It’s all been destroyed? Nothing left?”

“I don’t know what to tell you, I burnt every last thing she had left in this world until it was ash. There is _nothing_ left,” he enunciates slowly, trying to get the point across.

This stony woman actually cracks a smile at that. It’s more of a smirk, really. “Oh. Well, I guess there’s nothing to worry about then.”

“Hang on,” Gerry starts, brows furrowing. “You wanted her stuff destroyed, too?”

“Oh, yes,” Gertrude chuckles. “Mary was an evil bitch, and I’ve waited years to get my hands on a way to destroy her collection. To hear that it’s already gone is… quite a relief.”

“Well… good, then, I guess. Can I go?” He gestures to the door behind him.

“Actually,” she says, “Are you looking for employment?”

“Not a chance,” Gerry says, a sudden burst of adrenaline firing through his veins, and he stands quickly from his seat, “I know what happened to my dad.”

“Oh, no, no, I wasn’t thinking anything official, so to speak,” she says, holding up her hands in apologetic manner. “I was thinking more along the lines of… you could use the resources we have here to find Leitners, and I could siphon some funding your way. Entirely outside of Elias’ jurisdiction. No employment forms necessary.”

“You do have quite the stockade of information here,” Gerry says, glancing at the boxes and boxes of files and statements. There are probably several more boxes lying around here somewhere that are full of notes on Leitners, and people that might be worth looking into. It’s too good an opportunity to pass up. “Fuck it. I’ll hunt Leitners for you.”

Gertrude nods, business like. She stands from her desk and holds out a hand.

Gerry doesn’t take it. “I thought you said nothing official?”

She considers her hand for a moment before retracting it, “Quite right. I’ll show you around.”

She shows Gerry around the building, including the library and artefact storage (which she warns him away from). They come to a stop in what looks to be a common room, desks arranged in some kind of order, with a few assistants milling about, shuffling through papers and tapping away at out-dated keyboards. Gerry pays them no mind.

“If you need anything,” Gertrude says, “Don’t hesitate to ask me. Or ask Michael if you’re having trouble with the filing system. Actually, Michael? Could you find Joe Abernathy’s statement for me?”

Gerry’s heart does not skip a beat when he hears that name. He trained that shit right out of him not long after Michael had left for Wales. The name was just too common. A good thing he had, too, otherwise dealing with Michael Crew would have given him a legitimate heart attack. So the voice that answers the old woman is entirely unexpected and feels like a punch to the gut.

“Yes, of course, Ms. Robinson. I’ll have it on your desk in a few-.”

Gerry’s head snaps up at the sound of that lilting tone, and his gaze locks with Michael’s. His eyes are still that cloudy grey, framed by long gold lashes. His complexion is a shade or two darker; perhaps he’s been abroad recently. His freckles stand out against his skin and his hair is bright white gold in the pale light pouring in through tall arched windows. It’s held back in a bun, a few loose strands, like always, twisting free around his ears. Gerry’s veins are buzzing with something new and old, painful and sweet. He’s at a complete loss for words as he sees Michael, _his_ Michael, after so long.

He’s standing stock still, lips parted in shock, eyes wide and glassy, as his reply to Gertrude is lost in the back of his throat. Gerry can’t say that he looks much different.

Gertrude looks between the two, eyebrows raised, before shaking her head and turning back down the corridor. She doesn’t have time for whatever bullshit _that_ might be.

Michael, startled by her movement, blinks rapidly, and spins around, dashing out of the common room. Gerry takes a moment to catch his breath and steady himself before going after him.

Unfamiliar with the layout of the place, it takes a while for Gerry to find him. He peaks into a few rooms, finding either storage space or empty offices, until finally he comes across the break room, Gertrude having breezed by it earlier. Michael is there.

He’s standing against the kitchenette counter, one hand white-knuckling the edge of the chipped surface and another clamped hard over his mouth. He’s looking down, and away from where Gerry stands at the entrance to the room, but he can see that his eyes are misty, and his shoulders are jumping spasmodically. Michael is visibly trembling, and Gerry feels sick to his stomach, knowing that he’s done this to him. 

Gerry stops in the doorway, at some sort of metaphysical crossroads. He didn’t know Michael would be here. If he had had any inkling that he would be here he would have stayed far away, Agnes’ and Gertrude’s wrath be damned. On the other hand, Michael is working for the _Magnus Institute_. There is only one reason why Gerry left Michael behind nearly a decade ago, and it was so that he wouldn’t get hurt. If Michael has landed himself in the heart of danger and fear and lies entirely through his own choices, was Gerry leaving the right thing to do in the first place? And if not, what’s stopping him from being with him now? Gerry shakes his head. There’s no guarantee that Michael would even still want him in any case.

Gerry steps into the room. He walks slowly toward Michael, not wanting to scare him away any more than he already has. He comes to stand almost directly in front of Michael and gets little to no reaction.

“Michael,” Gerry says, as gently as he can.

Michael jumps, yelping in surprise and knocking his head back into a low hanging cupboard. His eyes are wide as they look at Gerry, confused and scared and very betrayed, and it breaks Gerry’s heart to look into them. He can’t deny though, the itching in his bones he feels so keenly, easing ever so slightly at finally standing so near to Michael again.

“Michael,” Gerry says, keeping his voice low. He tries to think of anything to say, anything at all, and comes up blank. What do you say when you find the love of your life again, after nine years, when you weren’t looking for them? When you were actively trying to keep them safe by not being with them?

Michael takes a few deep breaths, hands shaking noticeably where they curl into fists at his sides. “Gerry?” he says uncertainly. Gerry can’t place if it sounds like Michael’s unsure that it’s really him, or if he’s wondering why he’s here.

“Yeah,” he answers anyway. “It- It’s been a while.”

A strangled laugh bubbles out of Michael, but he isn’t smiling. “Gerry…” he whispers, “It’s been nine years.”

“A lot has happened,” Gerry says, stating the obvious. “I’m sorry, Michael, I-.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Michael squeaks, holding a hand to his mouth. “N-not here, please. I have to get back to work, I, uh, Gertrude needs that statement, um…”

Gerry can sense Michael about to flee again, and makes one last ditch attempt to keep him, “Can we catch up? Later, I mean? I know you have work right now, but… please? Fuck, Michael, just… please?” Gerry cannot bring himself to be ashamed of the desperation that is so apparent in his voice.

Michael looks up from the floor and into Gerry’s eyes, brows pinched and gaze full of conflict. His fingers twitch at his sides, as if wanting to reach out, but stopping themselves. “I… You want to catch up… with me?”

Gerry lets his face drift into a semblance of a smile, aiming for reassuring, “Yes, Michael. I want to catch up.”

Michael frowns, like there’s something he can’t quite put together; two pieces that won’t fit into each other, no matter which way he looks at it. “Um, okay. I get off at 6, though I often stay late.”

Gerry’s shoulders relax, tension bleeding out that he hadn’t known he was holding. “Great, uh, do you remember where we met, in 2000?”

Michael nods, the beginnings of a genuine smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Meet there? After 6?”

“Yeah, Michael, I’d like that,” Gerry says. “I’ll, uh, leave you to your work then. I’ll see you, okay?”

Michael still looks a little bit confused but lifts his hand in a hesitant wave as Gerry leaves the room.

*

The bar is a welcome warmth after the cold of mid-November London as Gerry enters the pub at six on the dot. He knows Michael won’t be here already, he’s always been a hard worker. He wanted to get here before him, anyway. The thought of Michael arriving here, finding no Gerry at the bar, and leaving, felt a lot like a kick in the teeth.

Gerry’s leg bounces against the bar stool, nerves building every passing second, terrified that Michael wouldn’t want to see him again. It would make sense. Gerry had left Michael in the height of vulnerability, moving away from a loveless family to an unfamiliar country, abandoned by the only person he had ever trusted with his truest self.

He can’t imagine really having that much impact on a person, especially someone so magnetic as Michael, but the more Gerry thinks back to those two blissful years they had shared, the more he feels sure that, yes, they had been in love, and Gerry had left him. Even if it had been for his own safety, Gerry feels still like an actual heaping pile of flaming human garbage for it, every single day.

Michael would have every right to stay away from him. He’s probably moved on, found himself some other handsome boy to cuddle up to at night and share all his deepest thoughts with. Lord knows that’s what he deserves, even if Gerry’s gut twists with jealousy at the thought of it.

It’s only about ten past six when Michael shows up, but it’s been enough time for Gerry to work himself into a nervous sweat, trying his absolute best not to slam his first rum and coke before Michael arrived. Gerry watches as Michael anxiously scans the room, slowly unwinding his scarf from his neck. His eyes land on Gerry and his face does a funny sort of manoeuvre. It begins at surprise, slides through happiness, detours through disbelief before finally arriving at confusion. 

He makes his way to Gerry at the bar, smiling a small beautiful thing. “You’re here,” he says. It sounds like a question.

“Of course,” Gerry replies, feeling like a complete ass. _Of course_ Michael is confused about why he hadn’t fucking abandoned him again.

They find themselves a table at the back, partially obscured from the other patrons. Gerry is surprised by Michael ordering and subsequently downing two shots of tequila before requesting a cocktail and following Gerry to the table. At the very least, this night sure won’t be boring.

“Michael…” Gerry starts, unsure where to begin, “How are you?”

“I, uh, hm… That’s a good question, Gerry,” Michael replies. It sounds vaguely ironic, and Gerry thinks he deserves that, even if the tone definitely isn’t malicious.

“Do you like working at the Institute?” Gerry asks, aiming to give the conversation some direction.

Michael sighs, and smiles slightly, “Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely not the best rates, but it pays the bills and it’s plenty interesting.”

“I bet,” Gerry says. “How was, uh, Wales?”

Michael pauses before nodding distantly, not meeting Gerry’s eyes, “It was okay. School there was really great, friends I made were great, uh… yeah.” Michael puts both his hands flat on the table, and giggles a little, “Those shots are… they have _arrived_.”

Gerry smiles at that familiar laugh, letting the sound sink into him, making him wonder how he was ever able to leave. Michael smiles at the waitress as she drops off an obnoxiously pink drink at the table.

“Michael why did you take those shots?” Gerry asks, unsure why he had thought starting the conversation off with niceties would go anywhere. It had always been straight to the meat with them.

“Gerry…” Michael sighs, sipping his drink, “There’s a lot of things I want to tell you. Things that my therapist thinks I should tell you, and I definitely can’t do that sober. So drink up, I don’t want you falling behind.”

Gerry blinks, and chuckles, although he doesn’t feel very amused at the thought of Michael needing a therapist. “Alright then,” he downs his glass and orders another.

“Gerry when you left I… I had no idea how to handle that kind of thing. I didn’t- I kind of got a bit fucked up, you know. I thought you didn’t love me anymore, maybe you didn’t, I still don’t know, but, fuck. You were the only thing I was really sure of. Then you were just… not there anymore,” Michael says all of this while staring forlornly into his glass.

Gerry feels sick at what Michael’s just said, and holds his head in his hands, “Michael, fuck, I’m so sorry. I just wanted to keep you safe, and I was doing a lot of dangerous- I am doing a lot of dangerous shit, and I just didn’t want you to get caught in it, I didn’t trust myself and-.”

“Gerry, Gerry,” Michael says, giggling, “I know all that, now. I work at the fucking Institute; I know all about the entities and the fears and Leitner and all that shit. I tell you what; I nearly had a heart attack the first time I read your name in a statement…” He scoots his chair closer and puts a hand on Gerry’s where it lays on the table. “I want you to know- I don’t blame you for anything that did or didn’t happen to me after you left, because I know what I know now. That doesn’t mean shit didn’t happen to me, though, after, and- wait, you stole my fucking phone, didn’t you? Back then?”

Gerry is sitting very still, afraid if he moves Michael will take his hand away. The feel of Michael’s warm hands against his is the single most electrifying thing he’s felt in nine years. His hands are a little rougher than they were, but still tender, and so warm. “Yeah, I did. Sorry,” he replies vaguely. “What do you mean shit happened to you?”

“Well, you know,” Michael drains the rest of his glass, “Hold on a second.” He goes to the bar to order another. He comes back and says, “You know, after you left, I thought that I just wasn’t good enough, like I thought maybe you left because, cos I wasn’t enough for you, and so, I found myself, really just, throwing my all into anyone that seemed even vaguely interested in me. I was trying so hard to be enough, and I just… wasn’t.”

“Michael…” Gerry says, hardly audible above the growing din of the pub, “You were more than I ever could have asked for. You gave me a place to be.”

Michael props his chin up in his hand, “So you left because you thought I’d be safer without you?”

“Yeah, Michael, you have to understand, I never wanted to hurt you, I swear to go-.”

“I believe you, Gerry,” Michael says, looking him straight in the eye for the first time that night. “I just don’t… _believe_ you. Do you know what I’m saying?”

Gerry nods, watching dejectedly as Michael empties half of his drink down his throat, starting to get genuinely worried about alcohol poisoning. “I spent so long,” Michael says, “thinking that you had left because I wasn’t good enough. I know the truth now, but the impression that that made, it’s hard to shake.” His eyes are starting to mist over. “But enough about me. How has life treated you? Got some new tattoos, I see.”

Gerry self-consciously rubs at the eyes staring out from his knuckles, “Yeah, I, uh. I’ve just been doing the same old shit. Hunting Leitners, protecting myself. Travelled a bit, for the job. Outside of that, it’s been, uh, boring. Just boring.”

Michael scratches casually at his eyebrow, again not meeting Gerry’s eye. “Have you, uh, have you met anyone else?”

Gerry looks carefully at Michael’s face. It’s meticulously impassive, but Gerry doesn’t think he’s dreaming when he sees the smallest hint of jealousy creep into his gaze when Gerry says, “No one serious. You must have, though, right?”

Michael looks up at him, not smiling, “And what if I hadn’t? What if I abstained all those years because I was still in love with you? What then? I’m going to get a couple more shots. You want any?”

Gerry blinks, stunned at Michael’s abrupt change in questioning. He watches Michael collect a tray of shots and bring it over. Gerry takes two and Michael takes two, and within a short space of time, they are both close to clutching the table to stop from falling out of their seats.

“I wish I had,” Michael says, gazing half-lidded at Gerry.

“Had what?”

“Not been with anyone, after you,” Michael eyes his pink drink disinterestedly, swirling the straw around. Gerry looks more intently and sees his eyes brimming with unshed tears.

“Why?” Gerry says, bringing his chair closer to hear Michael’s mumbled words under all the ambient noise.

“They weren’t… they weren’t good. Like you were. They weren’t good,” he practically whispers, a few tears spilling down his flushed cheeks.

Something cold and burning slides through Gerry’s veins, scorching a path and setting his skin alight. It feels like rage. “Did someone hurt you?”

Michael shakes his head slightly, but it isn’t in denial, “I don’t wanna talk about that, right now.” He meets Gerry’s gaze with watery eyes.

“Michael,” Gerry urges, breathing his name like a prayer.

“Gerry, please,” Michael returns, “Let’s talk about something else. Let’s talk about the weather or something, like normal people do.”

Gerry takes a few stabilizing lungfuls of stale pub air and does not think about the assholes that may have laid a hand on Michael. “Well… when it’s cloudy I think of your eyes,” Gerry says, face immediately colouring as he hears his own words. “Christ that was cheesy.”

Michael snorts and belts out a beautiful loud laugh. Gerry is nearly calm again. The evening rolls on, time winding a bright red thread around the two of them, book-hunter and librarian, and pulling tight, reeling them closer and closer.

Gerry feels like he is going to explode. Michael’s face is so close to his own. He is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, pink face and gold hair, fingers meandering up Gerry’s arm and seat pulled flush against his. Save for the hand resting delicately on Gerry’s bicep, they aren’t touching.

Michael’s gaze drops down to Gerry’s lips as he breathes, “I am ready to get hurt again.”

“Michael… I don’t want you to think like that. I’ve never wanted to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you,” Gerry whispers desperately.

Michael shuts his eyes tight for a brief moment, then looks directly into Gerry, “What have I seen that could tell me otherwise?”

Gerry’s breath catches in his strangled throat and tears well unbidden in his eyes. He feels so fucking guilty. How could he have been so fucking stupid? He squeezes his eyes closed and whispers, “Michael I am so fucking sorry, I- I want to make it up to you, so bad, just tell me how. Tell me how, _please_.”

Michael’s hand is on his cheek now, brushing gently at the tears dripping down his face. His face is so close, Gerry can feel his sweet breath wafting over his lips. He feels Michael shift, and his breath is now on his ear.

Michael says, “Don’t cry, love, your make up will run. What you did hurt me, but you never did. If you’d have stayed, we may have had years together, but we may not have been here, now. You left and now we are here. Now we have a chance at forever. I want this, you, now, and to the end.”

Gerry sniffs and opens his eyes as Michael pulls his face back to just in front of Gerry’s. “This is happening,” Michael says with a disbelieving smile. He is still so close.

“I don’t want to hu-,” Michael closes the gap between their mouths, and he is kissing Gerry. Gerry’s words die on his lips, he can’t even remember what they might have been, because it’s been nine years, and Michael is kissing him. Michael is here and Gerry is here. They are here, _together_.

Michael is drunk, and so is Gerry, and the kiss is uncoordinated and messy. It’s very reminiscent of their first kiss, when Michael was 14 and Gerry 15, because right now, in this bar, they are the only thing that matters. Michael tastes sweet and bright, tequila heavy on his tongue. Gerry tastes like smoke and rum and it isn’t the greatest thing in the world but who gives a fuck.

Michael’s hands are on Gerry’s arms, palming up his neck, feeling down his chest, trailing across is jaw. Gerry’s hands fumble up, tripping over the smooth planes of Michael’s throat and sinking into his hair.

Gerry pulls back, breathless, and leans his forehead against Michael’s. This time there is no lipstick on Michael’s mouth, because now it’s transfer-proof. It’s 2011 and Gerry just kissed Michael after nine years of trying to forget his existence. What had he been thinking?

“What would your therapist think of this?” Gerry asks.

Michael giggles, “She would be very disappointed.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Gerry says, hands slowly finding their way out of Michael’s hair and resting on his shoulders.

“I’m tired of drinking,” Michael says, “I want to go home, and I want you to come with me.”

Gerry takes a deep breath, “Okay.”

*

Michael’s front door slams closed with a little more force than necessary as Michael pushes Gerry against it. Gerry is sucking a bruise into Michael’s neck and Michael is pulling frantically at Gerry’s coat. He finally manages it off when Gerry lets go of Michael’s waist for a split second. Gerry goes to reel Michael into another heated kiss, but Michael’s face is gone; it’s at Gerry’s chest as Michael crouches briefly, and handily hoists Gerry up into his arms and pins him against the door with his body.

“Holy _fuck_ that was hot,” Gerry gasps, grasping aimlessly at Michael’s shoulders as he licks a stripe up Gerry’s throat.

“I know I shouldn’t trust you, but that lip ring is still so fucking hot,” Michael says, sliding his tongue against Gerry’s before sucking the aforementioned ring into his mouth, running his teeth over the flesh of his bottom lip.

Gerry groans into it. “Can you make it to the bedroom?” he says once his lip is free.

Michael leans his weight against Gerry and the door groans against its hinges. Gerry can feel Michael’s growing need press against his own. “You are really fucking heavy; I didn’t think this through.”

“I have legs don’t worry,” Gerry pants as Michael drops him and leads him quickly to the bedroom. There’s no light in the room save for the fair amount streaming in through the window from the street outside.

Michael pushes down on Gerry’s shoulders until he sits on the edge of the bed. He straddles Gerry, fitting himself into his lap and rolling down against him once. Gerry moans and drops his head down against Michael’s shoulders. He relishes the feel of Michael’s warm fingers pushing up into his hair and lets his own drift down to the hem of Michael’s shirt. He slips his hands under and shudders at the feel of his heated skin.

“Is this okay?” he asks, kissing up Michael’s throat. Michael stops moving.

“What did you say?” he says, pulling back to look at Gerry with a frown.

“I asked if this is okay? Me touching you?” Gerry says, growing concerned.

“Oh.” Michael says, still frowning. He doesn’t start moving again.

“Michael are you alright?” Gerry asks.

Michael shifts off of Gerry’s lap and slumps onto the bed beside Gerry. “Yeah, I just… god, no one ever really asks me that anymore.”

“God, Michael…” Gerry says, reaching a tentative hand out to skim across Michael’s back. Michael shudders and rest his head on Gerry’s shoulder. He’s trembling slightly.

“I’m sorry for ruining this, I am, I just,” Michael trails off.

“Michael you couldn’t ruin anything if you tried. I, fuck, I know it’s been nearly a decade, but there’s nothing you could do that would scare me away, I fucking promise,” he wraps an arm around him.

Michael looks up at him, eyes shining bright in the low light, and presses a delicate kiss to Gerry’s cheek. His hand drifts up to guide Gerry’s chin gently with his fingers. He tilts his head, and presses his lips slowly against Gerry’s, mouth wet and already parted. Gerry kisses back, moaning low in his throat at the feel of Michael’s tongue brushing his own. Michael kisses him slowly and thoroughly for a few earth-shattering moments before his hand drops to Gerry’s belt buckle.

Gerry breaks away, “We aren’t doing anything that you don’t want to.”

Michael’s gaze is fixed on Gerry’s mouth. “There’s nothing I’ve wanted but you for the past decade. I’m so sorry I wasn’t good enough.”

“Michael…” Gerry breathes, cupping Michael’s face in his hands, holding him gently but forcing him to look in his eyes. “You were everything to me, then. You still are now. You were and are always good enough, for _anyone_ , including some nobody weirdo like me. You have to know this. You. Are. Good enough.”

Michael’s eyes are swimming, and he looks away, sniffing and trying his best to keep his face straight. Gerry takes one of Michael’s hands in his own, “Michael I am so sorry.” He sighs, “Maybe I should go, just for now. Maybe things are too raw between us.”

Just as Gerry begins to say that, a feral noise claws it’s way out of Michael’s throat, and he clamps his arms around Gerry, squeezing him close and burying his face in his hair like his life depends on it. The noise is a strangled and broken cry, and it breaks his heart to hear it come from the most special person he has ever met, or ever will meet.

Gerry frees his arms from where Michael had trapped them and winds them around Michael in return, holding tight, trying to let him know that Gerry needs him just as much. He hooks his chin over Michael’s shoulder and says, “Okay, well, I didn’t actually want to leave, this works too.”

“Don’t leave,” Michael whispers hoarsely, lips brushing the shell of Gerry’s ear.

“I won’t, I won’t,” Gerry says, not bothering to hide the fact that he’s crying, burying his face in Michael’s shoulder, and holding on. 

Michael sniffles and the grip on the back of Gerry’s shirt loosens slightly.

“You want to go to bed? It’s getting pretty late.”

Michael nods and slowly releases Gerry, wiping a hand over his face as Gerry does the same. “Do you want some pyjamas?”

Gerry looks down at his tight leather pants and nods. They get themselves into bed, Gerry more comfortable than he’s been in a long time, in the over-sized clothes that smell like Michael. Michael’s still a little teary as he faces Gerry in bed, running a thumb over Gerry’s cheekbone.

Gerry puts his hand over Michael’s and waits patiently for him to settle down. Michael rushes forward to press a kiss to his lips, once, twice, three times, tasting like salt, before he tucks his head under Gerry’s chin and wraps an arm around Gerry’s middle.

“I missed you so fucking much, Michael,” Gerry whispers, unsure if Michael has fallen asleep.

The last thing Gerry feels before he falls asleep is a tender kiss to his collarbone and a whispered, “Me, too.”

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for sticking around for 6 chapters of my word vomit! Please comment and kudos if you feel like it ;0


	7. 2011+

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snapshots of Healing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Okay, so this one’s a chunkster. I swear I was going to do a final edit and post it yesterday, but my friend mentioned the Goonies so I had to watch it.  
> I’ve gotten so many great comments on this so far, they’ve really helped in my creative process and I can’t wait for y’all to read the last piece, so pls enjoy :)
> 
> (content warning for blood and gore- it’s a dream but just thought I should point it out)

Gerry is woken by the sound of water running. He opens his eyes slowly, feeling a protest deep in his bones as he shifts from his position. He looks around the room. There are a few photos hanging on the walls, a few modest sets of drawers, with various bits and pieces scattered on top. Pale light spills into the room from the window beside the bed, revealing a carpet littered with clothes. Yeah, this is definitely Michael’s room.

The sound of water running from the bathroom is nearly drowned out by the steady hammer of rain against the glass. As near as Gerry can tell, the shower hasn’t been running for that long before it shuts off, and Michael emerges from the bathroom amidst a cloud of steam.

He drops down onto the bed next to Gerry, looking relieved to find him still here. Gerry reaches out instinctively, wrapping one arm around his waist and brushing a few damp strands of hair off Michael’s face with the other. Michael looks tired, dark bags under his eyes.

“Did you sleep?” Gerry asks, swiping his thumb over the dewy skin of Michael’s cheekbone.

Michael sighs, shifting closer and tucking Gerry’s hair behind his ear, “I didn’t want to wake up and find you not here.”

Gerry pulls Michael close, pressing his lips to the corner of Michael’s mouth in lieu of an answer. “Is this okay?”

“Yes,” Michael says, hands resting on Gerry’s chest.

Gerry continues to press soft, lingering kisses to Michael’s face, travelling along his cheek, to his forehead and chin. He places delicate fluttering kisses to his eyelids. Finally he kisses Michael on the mouth, soft as ever, moving his lips only slightly until Michael kisses him back, catching Gerry’s bottom lip between his and tugging. Gerry lets his mouth drop open on a sigh, and Michael’s tongue darts forward to fill the space. Gerry closes his lips around it and sucks gently, earning a moan from Michael. Gerry pulls away and tucks his head into Michael’s throat, winding his arms around him and squeezing lightly. 

Michael hums happily, “Do you want to take a shower, Gerry? I’ll make breakfast.”

Gerry takes the shortest shower you can imagine, wanting Michael out of his sight for as little time as possible. He scrubs at himself rapidly before turning the water off and toweling off as quick as he can, tying his hair up in a sloppy bun and rummaging through the bathroom cabinets for make-up remover, wiping the errant dark streaks from his face. He shamelessly puts the sweater Michael had lent him back on and takes a moment to inhale deeply with his nose buried in it.

He finds his way to the kitchen and sees Michael standing at the stove, lighting it, and drizzling oil into a flat pan. He’s wearing a silk robe patterned like The Starry Night over a light singlet, and his hair is in a loose braid over his shoulder, a few strands beginning to curl away as it dries.

Gerry approaches him from behind and winds his arms around his middle, plastering himself against Michael’s back and peppering kisses along his shoulders, standing on his tiptoes to reach the back of his neck. “Is this okay?”

Michael giggles a quiet “Yes,” secures Gerry’s arms around his waist with one hand and drops bacon into the pan with the other. Gerry allows himself to soak in Michael’s radiant warmth for a long few moments as Michael works at the stove.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Gerry says, hooking his chin over Michael’s shoulder and reveling in the fact that Michael is cooking them breakfast. Only yesterday morning Gerry had woken up and ignored the churning in his gut at the sight of the shell sitting on his dresser, now Gerry is wearing Michael’s sweater and feeling his heart beat against his front as he fries bacon. Gerry can hardly contain the pure glee fizzling away in his chest.

“You can make some toast if you want,” Michael says, bumping his head against Gerry’s. Gerry departs from Michael’s back with a swift kiss to his neck and tries his very best to make some toast.

Michael dishes up two plates of perfectly cooked eggs and bacon while Gerry contributes two blackened pieces of bread. They sit down at the small dining table, beside a window looking down at the foggy London streets, and Michael eyes Gerry cautiously when he swings his long legs into Gerry’s lap. Gerry shifts closer so they aren’t in danger of slipping, smiling as he drums his fingers on Michael’s ankle, and chews on a piece of bacon. Michael makes a show of biting into the ‘toast’, groaning and holding his jaw as if it broke a few teeth. Gerry chuckles and apologises. It’s all very domestic.

Gerry takes a deep breath as he watches Michael stare out the window, eyes grey as the sky outside and twirling a lock of hair absently around his finger. “Michael?” He receives a hum and an unbearably cute smile in response. “I, uh, I don’t know if we’re on the same page here, but I just want to make things clear… I want to be with you. I want to be yours again… I- if you’ll have me.”

Michael blushes a bright red and his smile grows as he looks down at his plate, “Yeah, Gerry, I want that, too. I want this to work.”

“Great,” Gerry says, picking up Michael’s hand from the table and planting a short kiss on his knuckles. Michael watches, open-mouthed as he does so, color high on his cheeks.

“Gerry…” Michael says, tucking his hair behind his ear and looking away, “I want to tell you something, but. I might cry about it and I don’t want to ruin this.”

Gerry frowns, “No shame in crying, Michael. And like I said, being with you is the best thing I could ever ask for, and you couldn’t ruin it.”

“Okay, well, uh. Here it is. My parents, um, they disowned me, not long after you left. They found those photos I kept of us. Mum, was um, going through my stuff, she thought she would help me pack, but she found them and she showed my father, and I came home to a note on the counter that said… it said ‘Be out by tomorrow evening. Your mother and I are very disappointed in you.’ It was sitting on top of those photos, and I knew that I, ah, had seen my parents for the last time.” Michael is wiping shakily at his eyes by the end of it. Gerry pulls him into a tight hug, planting gentle kisses in his hair as Michael sighs sadly against him.

“Michael, you deserved better than that,” Gerry says, running a hand down his back.

“It wasn’t a surprise, I mean, I was just upset that I had nearly made it out without them discovering me, and I just got sloppy in those last weeks,” Michael says, pulling back and collecting the plates.

“You can’t blame yourself for this, Michael. It wasn’t your fault.” Gerry follows him into the kitchen and helps him clear up.

“I should have hidden those photos better,” he says, scrubbing a little too hard at his plate.

“You shouldn’t have had to hide them at all,” Gerry insists.

Michael sighs, shoulders drooping as he sets his plate up to dry. “The world we live in, huh?”

“Yeah…” Gerry lets his hand trail back to his side, unsure if touching Michael is the best course of action right now.

“I hate to be a leech, but do you have any weed?” Michael asks, pouting plaintively at Gerry, a glimmer of humour entering his eyes.

Gerry smiles at that look and says, “Yeah, actually, I might have a blunt or two in my bag.” Gerry fishes through his bag and finds a couple of pre-rolled’s. They lounge on the sofa and Gerry lights one. He takes a lungful before passing it to Michael, who takes a hit and doesn’t cough.

He hands it back and asks, “You used to get picked up all the time, right? By cops?”

Gerry chuckles, “Yeah they got me on possession but that was only because they wanted to bring me in and ask me about other shit that was going on. I didn’t know anything obviously, I just looked really fucking shady.”

Michael laughs, “If you had told me back then that my boyfriend wasn’t in a gang, he was just out hunting evil books every night, I would not have believed it.”

Gerry chuckles and gathers Michael loosely in his arms, lying back on the armrest.

“Is that still a problem for you? The police?” Michael says, taking a hit.

Gerry shakes his head, “No, it wasn’t long before I got lumped in with anything that would get them sectioned. Do you know about sectioned?” He continues at Michael’s nod, “Yeah, I’m considered ‘weird’ and so normal cops stay away, and I’m not a threat, so sectioned don’t take me in either.”

Michael hums and considers the joint, looking coyly at Gerry through his lashes, “Can we shotgun the rest of this?”

“Sounds good by me,” Gerry mumbles, manoeuvring Michael to straddle his lap. Michael looks down at him with an anticipatory bite of his lip, and Gerry is struck again by the absurdity of the situation. He hadn’t seen Michael in nine years and now here he is, sitting in Gerry’s lap, hands resting delicately on his shoulders.

Gerry takes a lungful of smoke, then reels Michael in by the back of his neck, slotting their mouths together and breathing out slowly. Michael’s chest expands as he inhales, pressing closer to Gerry. Gerry feels a rush better than any hit when Michael breathes roughly out through his nose, and relaxes his lips, kissing Gerry with a slow heat.

They smoke the blunt down to the end like that, breathing into each other and dissolving into a slow, giggling make-out after each hit. Michael circles his hips slowly against Gerry’s, sighing softly against his skin and running his slender fingers through his dark hair. Gerry is feeling sluggish and electrified, enjoying things as they are, Michael cupping his face and pressing smiling kisses to his cheeks.

Gerry drops his hands to Michael’s hips, not quite stilling his motion. “You want to do anything?” Gerry asks, kissing Michael’s cheek.

Michael seems to consider this, and his movements stop. “Actually I really want to take a nap.” He laughs and speckles kisses all over Gerry’s face.

“Okay, nap it is,” Gerry says, pivoting in his seat to lie against a few pillows, Michael resting his weight on Gerry’s chest, chin propped on his shoulder. He slots a leg between Gerry’s and curls the other one up beside his hips, pulling a throw blanket off the back of the couch to cover the both of them.

A startled ‘mrrp!’ trills from above them as Michael tugs the blanket. “Michael, do you have a cat?”

“Oh, yeah,” Michael says sleepily, “her names Cake-Boy.”

Cake-Boy sits bristled beside the sofa, watching Gerry with a feral look. The fur of her tail stands on end and her back is arched, clearly uncomfortable with the presence of this newcomer.

“Why is her name Cake-Boy?” Gerry asks.

“She fucking loves cake,” Michael mumbles sleepily.

Gerry chuckles, “Well alright, then.” Michael shifts slightly, wiggling closer, and breathes a soft sigh.

Gerry thinks he’s already fallen asleep when he opens his eyes, quite awake, and says, “Gerry…” contemplatively.

“Mm?” he answers, trailing his fingers along Michael’s spine and trying to wave Cake-Boy away from scratching at the leg of the sofa with his foot.

“I… gave you that name. I remember.” Michael’s voice is far away and wistful.

“Yeah…” Gerry says, seeing a tiny blond boy wrinkling his nose up when he’d introduced himself as Gerard. “I think you did.”

“Gerry?” Michael says with a new edge of apprehension in his tone.

“Yeah?” 

“I think… I’m still in love with you,” Michael whispers, fingers clenching a fistful of his own sweater on Gerry’s chest. “I don’t mind… if you don’t feel the same, I just, um, I don’t think I ever stopped, and I want you to know that.”

Gerry presses a tender kiss to Michael’s forehead and sighs, “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love you, Michael.”

Michael smiles, content to believe him, if only for a moment, and falls asleep.

*

Michael takes Gerry on a date. He blushes furiously when he asks, and he blushes some more when they meet there, at his favourite café on a slow Wednesday afternoon.

“Tell me a story,” Michael says, pouring ungodly amounts of sugar into his latte.

“Since when did you become the Archivist?” Gerry jokes, earning a playful glare. He relents and regales Michael with an only-slightly-embellished tale of adventure and intrigue and book-hunting.

“Did you get a tetanus shot for that? When the dog bit you?” Michael asks, hanging on every word.

“No? Is that what tetanus shots are for?” Gerry asks, frowning.

“Oh my god,” Michael says, putting his head in his hands. “My boyfriend has rabies.”

Gerry laughs loudly, drawing a few looks from fellow café-goers. He scowls back at them. “I do not have rabies. The bite didn’t even get infected.”

Michael peeks at him from between his fingers, “Wait… did Mary ever get you vaccinated?”

Gerry acts confused, “Vaccinated from what?”

“Gerry!” Michael gasps, covering his mouth.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding!” he says, soaking in the disbelieving smile on his boyfriend’s face.

Michael sighs, shaking his head exasperatedly, “Well… we’ve done a lot of catching up on the past decade, but I think we’ve missed a vital question.”

Gerry frowns, “What’s that?”

Michael stifles a cheeky grin and asks, “Is your favourite band My Chemical Romance?”

Gerry laughs again, and kicks at Michael under the table, this time ignoring the stares he draws.

*

They’re at a Christmas Party. A Magnus Institute approved office Christmas Party. It’s uncomfortable as all hell at first, but once Gerry spikes the eggnog, things get going a little smoother. Michael had dragged Gerry along because he didn’t want to be the only one without a date, even though there were plenty of dateless individuals here. 

The common room is decorated with gaudy Christmas bits and pieces, including a huge banner that reads “Merry Christmas!” in bold red letters. The desks are pushed to one side and a long table holds an array of finger foods. That’s where Gerry stays. All told it probably isn’t the worst, and the atmosphere is generally festive, so Gerry thinks maybe Michael isn’t over-selling it too much when he tells Sasha the room looks great.

Elias is there, too. He takes a bit of cake and leaves promptly.

For all his anxiety, Michael has no trouble striking up a conversation with anybody in the room. It’s only when people start to visibly bore of the chat that Michael seems to start to panic, and retreats back to Gerry’s side.

“Having fun?” Gerry says as Michael wanders back to him and eats a few crackers from the snack table.

“Mmhm,” Michael says, mouth full, “I love Christmas music.”

Gerry smiles fondly at him as he wanders off again and goes back to watching the room. He sees Gertrude in the corner, looking bored. He considers going over to talk to her, maybe see what the latest is on any Leitners, but knows Michael would be disappointed if he didn’t try and ‘have fun’ at this stupid event.

People are starting to break away from the common room, drifting into various corners of the Archive for more of a private conversation. Gerry sees three of the new assistants chatting in one corner, one talking low and constant, another listening with rapt attention and the last looking embarrassed at both of their behaviour. Gerry watches in amusement until someone appears at his side, startling him. It’s Sasha.

“So…” she says, suggestively, “You and Michael, huh?”

Gerry takes a sip of eggnog, “Don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

“Oh, come on, everyone knows. Neither of you are subtle,” she says, joining in in watching the three boys.

“We aren’t trying to be subtle. Can’t we just exist in peace?” Gerry asks, hoping he won’t have to continue this conversation if he just keeps eating cheese and crackers.

“No, it’s sweet. Michael’s a good guy, he deserves someone who loves him,” she says, looking at him closely. Gerry stares at her for a moment or two before she’s seemingly satisfied with whatever she sees in him. “Where is he, by the way?”

“I don’t know,” Gerry says, before scanning around the room. At first glance, he isn’t here. At second, Gerry sees him leaning against a wall, half-secluded down a hallway. There’s a tipsy flush on his cheeks, and his shoulders are bunched high around his ears as one of the research team leans toward him with wandering eyes. Something hot and protective floods Gerry’s veins and he puts his drink down.

Sasha follows his gaze over to the two, “Oh, Brad’s a flirt; got to be careful with him.” Gerry is already gone.

Gerry is back by Michael’s side before he can even consciously think to start moving. He puts a hand on Michael’s elbow and leans up to press a chaste kiss to his cheek. Michael instinctively leans down to meet him, then drapes a long arm around Gerry’s shoulders, still listening intently to whatever _Brad_ is saying. Gerry looks over to see how he reacts.

Brad has stuttered to a stop and looks at Gerry with narrowed eyes and thin lips. “Uh, actually, I might go see Emily, I haven’t wished her a Merry Christmas.” He makes a hasty exit, but not before Gerry pointedly notices his Welsh accent.

“I should probably warn him that Emily is Jewish…” Michael says, absently fiddling with a zipper on Gerry’s jacket as he watches Brad leave.

Gerry indulges himself in a tight hug before pulling away and drawing Michael into a quick kiss. “What’s this for?” Michael says, smiling.

“He was hitting on you,” Gerry mumbles, not meeting Michael’s eyes, suddenly embarrassed at his display of possessiveness. 

Michael giggles, “Do you think so? I thought he was just being friendly.”

Gerry looks at him fondly, “You have no idea the effect you have on people, babe.”

“Do you not trust me, then?” Michael asks, a tinge of confusion in his voice.

“No, of course I do! It’s just that I don’t want them getting the wrong idea, since you’re so nice to everybody all the time.”

Michael giggles again, watching Gerry with a heated look in his eye, “You were jealous?”

“No!” Gerry protests, turning his head away to hide his reddening face.

“You were jealous!” Michael says a little more confidently, turning Gerry’s face back to look at him. He presses a kiss to the corner of Gerry’s mouth and slides a hand under Gerry’s jacket before whispering in his ear, “let’s go home, I’ve talked to everyone here already.”

Gerry’s mouth goes dry at the feel of Michael’s warm hands drifting lazily over his chest, “Fuck yeah, okay, let’s ditch.”

*

Michael’s voice shakes but his hands are steady as he delicately swipes disinfectant over just one of the seeping cuts in Gerry’s arm. It’s the first time since they had found each other again that Gerry had been properly fucked up by a Leitner. He’d stumbled home and tried in vain to patch himself up with the overly sufficient first aid kit they had tucked away in the pantry. He should have known that his little hisses of pain would alert a sleeping Michael from a mile away, however hard he tried to stifle them.

He had come into the kitchen, bleary and rubbing at his eyes. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the blood dripping from Gerry’s fingers, before whipping into action quicker than Gerry could say ‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’

Michael is doing a fucking excellent job at patching Gerry up, the stitches neat and clean and the bandaging tight but comfortable. Gerry feels terrible at the way he stutters out every request, tears gathering in his eyes and occasionally slipping down his cheeks. Gerry had tried to comfort him, but Michael had barked at him to sit right back down so he could fix him. The wobble in his tone didn’t leave any room for argument. So now Gerry is watching helplessly as Michael sniffles his way through fixing him up, waiting quite impatiently for him to finish so he can hug Michael close.

He smooths the last bandage over his skin and Gerry immediately pushes past his hands to wrap him in a strong hug. “Don’t pull your stitches!” Michael says, still terribly upset, but welcoming the hug and burying his face in Gerry’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry you had to see this, babe, I hate upsetting you,” Gerry says, dropping kisses along his shoulder.

“You should have gone to the hospital!” Michael wails, crying in earnest.

“They ask too many questions.”

Michael hiccups and holds tighter, bunching his fist in the back of Gerry’s shirt. After what might be minutes or hours, he pulls back slightly and wipes at his face. “What would I do if I lost you?” he stutters.

“We always find our way back to each other, right?” Gerry says gently, stroking a thumb through the damp of his cheeks.

Michael nods, sniffing, “Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if we didn’t have to?”

Gerry draws him close again, planting a kiss on his cheek and winding his arms around him again, “Yeah, babe, it would.”

*

“I mean, I didn’t have a lot of stuff, in the first place,” Gerry says, looking over the meagre few boxes sitting just inside Michael’s flat. Deciding to move in hadn’t been a long discussion.

“Your apartment has basically just been storage space for the last few months, anyway. Waste of money, really,” Michael says, poking a nosy finger into a few of the boxes. A lot of them are just CDs and records, the rest are clothes and a lot of eyeliner. There’s also one box labelled ‘misc.’ that Michael eyes with interest. Gerry opens it, unsure what he had put in there.

Inside are a few sketchbooks and Gerry’s laptop. Sitting on the top is the shell Michael had found on the beach in 1997. The note he had slipped under his door in 2002 is tucked inside it. “What’s that shell about?” Michael asks.

Gerry hands it to him and says, “You gave it to me, remember, in South Telschin?”

Michael smiles vaguely, running his fingers over the ridges and the smooth interior. He draws the note out, unfolding it gently, the paper old and torn form being folded and unfolded countless times. He runs his eyes over it, and he takes a shuddering breath, biting his lip before folding it back up and tucking it back inside the shell.

“Hey,” Michael says, picking Gerry’s hands up and walking him toward the bedroom, “It’s late, let’s leave this for tomorrow.”

“It’s barely 4 in the afternoon,” Gerry says, laughing.

“Yeah, but I think we should do that thing where when you move into a place you have to _christen_ it, if you know what I mean,” he says with a ridiculous wink.

“Michael you’ve lived here for years, and I know for a fact we’ve _christened_ this place a dozen times over,” Gerry says, smiling at Michael’s cheeky grin.

“Let’s do it somewhere that isn’t the bed, then,” Michael says, humming considerately, looking around his apartment. _Their_ apartment. “Kitchen?”

Gerry picks Michael up and sits him on the kitchen counter, fitting himself snugly between his legs. “Like this?”

“Wait, but I cook here, this isn’t sanitary,” Michael says.

“You said it yourself, we have to christen the kitchen,” Gerry says, kissing down Michael’s throat and slipping his hands under his sweater. Michael lifts his arms up and Gerry divests him of it before dipping back in to mouth at his collarbone.

“Okay, but you know I’m going to blush every time I see this part of the kitchen, now?” Michael says, working his hands into Gerry’s shoulders as he rids him of his shirt and thumbs at his nipples.

“Half the reason why I’m doing this, babe,” Gerry mumbles against his chest before sinking down to his knees. Gerry pushes Michael’s skirt up around his hips and arranges his thighs comfortably around his shoulders before pressing his tongue flat against his erection.

“Oh!” Michael squeaks, hands flying to the back of Gerry’s head in surprise.

“Alright?” Gerry says against him.

“Yes, yeah, please continue,” Michael breathes, eyes fluttering closed.

And continue Gerry does, taking Michael apart slowly with his lips and tongue, teasing at his thighs with the tender, skimming touch of his fingertips. Gerry enjoys the feel of Michael’s slender fingers tugging at his hair and gripping at his shoulders, the taste of him on his tongue. He watches keenly through his lashes as Michael comes apart above him, head thrown back and throat bared, lips parted, and brows cinched together. 

Gerry runs a hand up the outside of his thigh and palms Michael’s ass, squeezing lightly. Gerry was not prepared for Michael to finish right then and there.

“Ah, fuck!” he cries, curling backward and driving erratically against Gerry’s mouth.

Gerry pulls away and wipes at the drool on the corner of his lips. Michael makes grabby hands at him and tugs him into a languid kiss, with probably too much tongue.

Michael spends at least ten minutes scrubbing at that counter before he starts making dinner, then orders takeout anyway.

*

Gerry checks his phone. They should have landed by now. He looks up at the arrival screen. Michael’s flight is delayed. Gerry curses, and continues to pace. Michael hadn’t been nervous about this trip, but Gerry had; he’d seen the hard glint in Gertrude’s eyes, and had barely been able to let Michael go on the morning of his departure.

Gerry stews in his nerves for nearly half an hour longer than he’d expected to, and finally, _finally_ , Michael’s plane touches down. Gerry waits anxiously at the arrival gate, chewing on his lip and picking at his nails. He sees Gertrude first, and she looks tired. For a few terrifying seconds, he thinks maybe this is the one where Michael doesn’t come back. Then he sees him. Gerry sees Michael before Michael sees him, and he looks _haggard_. Gerry knows that he doesn’t especially love planes, but his face betrays a deeper level of trauma than some minor turbulence.

Michael sees him waiting, and does a short run to get to him, falling heavy into Gerry’s arms and burying his face in his dark hair. “Take me home,” Michael whispers, a disturbing edge of desperation in his voice.

They collect Michael’s bags as quickly as they can, Michael keeping a firm grip on Gerry’s hand all the while, yet doing nothing to alleviate Gerry’s anxiety. At last they are back in their apartment, but Michael is still clearly rattled, so Gerry gets him on the couch and goes to make tea. 

With a steaming mug in his hands, Michael looks a little calmer, and hesitantly begins to speak. “I- we, uh… it wasn’t… was it real?”

Gerry shuffles closer to him and puts a hand on his knee, “You went to Sannikova, on a boat. What did you do there?”

Michael frowns, like he’s trying to remember something, but it keeps slipping from his mind every time he focuses on it, “Um… there was a door. Or maybe not. Gertrude gave me a map, but it didn’t make sense. I went through the door. I think. Yes… I did.”

Michael went through a door that may not have been there. The Spiral. Gertrude had sent him into the fucking Spiral.

“I went through this, um, hallway, and it got harder and harder to think, or, ah, understand where I was. I was following the map. It didn’t make sense, but it matched, and I found it… at the end. Or maybe the beginning? Another door. I opened it.”

Gerry’s insides go cold with dread. What the fuck had Gertrude done?

“Then I woke up. On the ice, and Gertrude was there. She looked… surprised, like she hadn’t expected to see me. Now… I’m here.” He takes a sip of tea, eyes vacant.

Gerry wraps an arm around him and rests his head on Michael’s shoulder. “It’s a miracle you survived.”

“What do you mean?” Michael asks, some of the haze clearing from his eyes.

“I mean you were in the spiral, Michael. Most people don’t survive that. But you did. Thank fuck,” Gerry says.

“I just… I really wanted to come home to you,” Michael says, looking up at Gerry with a small smile.

“And I’m so glad you did,” Gerry says, pressing a kiss to Michael’s face, shuffling in closer and swinging his legs into his lap.

Michael smiles slightly, but it fades quickly, and Michael is biting his lip uncertainly. “Gerry?”

“Yeah?”

Michael swallows and breathes out a big sigh, “I don’t want to work for the Institute, anymore.”

“…Okay,” Gerry says hesitantly.

“But I can’t quit… Even trying to think about quitting kind of… hurts? I don’t know how I can,” Michael sips at his tea and shivers.

“There is a way to quit,” Gerry offers.

Michael looks intently into Gerry’s eyes, “Tell me.”

“It’s not easy, and it’s not… painless. It’s a big sacrifice, and I’m not sure-.”

“Tell. Me,” Michael insists, tone leaving no room for argument.

Gerry sighs, searching Michael’s eyes. Then he tells him.

*

There are towels spread out all over the kitchen floor. Cake-Boy is pawing at one curiously. Michael borrowed one of Gerry’s black shirts; he doesn’t want anything to stain. They are sitting on the floor. In Michael’s right hand he holds an oyster-shucker, the sharpest knife commercially available. With the other hand he holds Gerry’s. In Gerry’s left hand is his phone, with the numbers 99 pressed into the screen.

“What will we tell all the doctors and nurses?” Michael asks, breathing shakily.

“I don’t know. You slipped?” Gerry suggests.

“I-I don’t think that’ll p-pass,” Michael says.

“We’ll figure it out. Are you sure you w-?”

“Yes, Gerry, I’m sure, it’s just… fuck, it’s not going to be easy.”

“I know,” Gerry says softly, rocking forward to press a kiss to Michael’s forehead, then looking intently into Michael’s eyes. It’s the last time he’ll see them.

Michael releases a long breath, hand shaking around the knife handle, “Well… I’ll see you on the other side. Or I’ll hear you, actually.”

Gerry laughs, and it’s a bit hysterical; there’s no humour in it. Michael lifts his right hand, moving the blade to his face. A phone rings. He stops. They look down at Gerry’s phone and it’s still. 

“It’s mine,” Michael whispers in the silence between rings, “If I answer it, I’ll lose the nerve. What should I do?”

Gerry blinks, unsure, “I don’t think that can be my decision, babe.”

Michael squeezes his eyes shut for a short moment, then looks intently at the knife. He drops it and digs his phone from his pocket, answering quickly. “Hello?”

Gerry breathes a sigh, he’s not sure it’s of relief; Michael might have to keep working at the Institute now, but at least he doesn’t have to risk his life by gouging his eyes out. Unless he tries again. Gerry watches as Michael’s face smooths over in shock, “What? How?”

“Well is anyone hurt? Is Gertrude okay?”

“O-okay, um, thank you, thanks, bye.” Michael hangs up, and looks at Gerry with an indiscernible expression, mouth wide open, “The Institute burned down.”

“ _What?_ ” 

“The Institute’s gone. No one got hurt and the Institute’s gone, I don’t have to work there anymore!” Slowly, a gleeful smile slips over his face.

“You- You don’t have to gouge your eyes out!” Gerry shouts, dropping his phone and grabbing Michael with both hands, pulling him to his feet.

“I don’t have to gouge my eyes out!” Michael shrieks, hopping on the spot before throwing his arms around Gerry.

Michael pulls back after a bone-crushing hug and smothers Gerry in hasty, relieved smooches. Gerry holds his boyfriend’s face at bay and leans his forehead against his, taking in the sight of Michael’s eyes, unharmed.

“Thank fucking fuck, holy shit. Michael I would’ve missed your eyes so much,” Gerry says, kissing his eyelids lightly.

“ _You_ would have missed them?” Michael giggles, blinking away tears gathered in his eyes.

“Wait, wait- what happened to the Institute?” Gerry says, still unwilling to look away from Michael, stroking his face reverently.

“Arson, apparently. Oh, I shouldn’t have said nobody got hurt- actually Elias perished in the fire,” Michael says, non-plussed.

“Ha! Good riddance,” Gerry laughs, smiling wide.

Michael pouts suddenly, frowning, “I’m gonna have to find a new job.”

Gerry pins his arms around Michael and lifts him up against him, spinning around on the toweled kitchen floor, “And it’ll be easy with two eyes!”

Michael laughs and clings onto him until Gerry sets him down. “I would have gouged my eyes out if I didn’t pick up that phone. The Institute would still be ash and I would be blind and possibly dead.”

“Let’s not think about that, huh?” Gerry says, kissing Michael on the cheek and picking some of the towels off the floor.

“Yeah,” Michael nods, scooping up the knife where Cake-Boy had been batting at it with a soft, “No, that’s not for kitties.”

*

Gerry is searching under the bed for the platform boots he had kicked under there the other day when he comes across a shoebox. Thinking maybe Michael had found them and put them away in here, he pulls it out, and lifts the lid off. Inside is a stack of photos, a hand-written note, and a ring.

Gerry recognises the note as the one from Michael’s story; from when his parents kicked him out. He fights the urge to crumple it in his fist, and instead sets it down, pulling out the stack of photos. The photos that Michael’s parents had found. Most of them are pretty similar to those that he’d seen on Michael’s camera roll in 2002. A lot of them feature Gerry. There’s one that Gerry doesn’t remember having been taken. It’s of himself, sitting shirtless on Michael’s bed, hickeys littering his throat and shoulder and chest, and he’s looking out of the bedroom window. There’s frost on the glass and a peaceful smile on his face. His skin is illuminated by the bright glow of a winter morning, and he looks content. 

The very next one is the same, except that Gerry is turned toward the camera, face red, with an embarrassed smile. His arm is outstretched, as if he’s trying to bat the camera out of Michael’s hands, and the photo is a little blurred, like he’d been knocked off balance, but Gerry can’t help but think the young man in this photo looks helplessly in love.

The next photo Gerry thinks must be of the same morning, but it’s of Michael. He’s younger, obviously, than he is now, and it shows in the easy smile he’s throwing at Gerry, biting his lip, and tucking a lock of hair behind his ear. Gerry is struck by the thought that Michael hasn’t got any less beautiful, even if his smiles aren’t as easy.

Gerry thinks perhaps any of these could have been explained away, perhaps not very convincingly, but there’s nothing too damning, until he finds one of both of them. It must have been taken by Julie, on one of the few outings they went on with her and her girlfriend. It’s Gerry sitting on a park bench, with Michael straddling his lap. Gerry remembers that bench; it had been out of the way of the general park area, and this wasn’t the only kiss they shared there.

It’s clearly them, in the photo, there’s no denying it, and they’re both smiling into a kiss, with Gerry’s hands holding firm to the sides of Michael’s face. That was a good day. Gerry blinks, and a drop of moisture splatters onto the photo. When had he started crying?

He shuffles through the deck, the photos ranging from more to less incriminating, one especially that makes Gerry blush to remember the evening it was taken. At the bottom of the box, are a few polaroids. They aren’t as old as the other photos, and the scrawled date on the bottom of them reads 2003 to 2006. It’s of Michael, not too much older than the other photos, but still much younger than the Michael that Gerry knows now. His heart aches to see the Michael that thought Gerry didn’t love him.

Beside Michael in the photo is another man. He’s broad, with light skin and dark hair. He’s smiling at Michael and has an arm around his waist. Michael is smiling back, but his hands are wound tight around each other, and he’s leaning slightly away. On closer inspection, Gerry sees the man has a strong grip on Michael’s shirt. Gerry looks away from it, waiting for his blood to cool down.

The other polaroids are more of the same, two different guys in total, Michael looking progressively anxious as the dates roll on. The edges of the photos are ripped, as if someone tried to tear them in two, but couldn’t manage through the thick polaroid film. One of them is singed around the corners.

Gerry turns his attention to the ring. At first glance he thought it may have been Michael’s fake engagement ring. But Gerry knows that one- that one had been a silver band with a modest white gem. This one has a thick band of dark gold, with a black opal set into it. It wouldn’t have been cheap. Gerry has never seen this ring before.

He sets it back in the box and pushes it back under the bed. Then he continues searching for his boots.

*

“Michael, watching your email isn’t going to make them reply any faster,” Gerry says, shaking Michael’s new coffee machine in frustration when it doesn’t do what he wants it to.

“You never know, Gerry. Maybe if I focus hard enough, I can channel my vibes through the network to their computer and it will influence them to, to uh, hire me. They’ll pick up my resume, they’ll see my name at the top, they won’t even read it, they’ll think, ‘yep, this is him’ and they’ll send me that confirmation email. I just gotta keep sending my vibes,” He says, refreshing his Gmail every few minutes, with no new results.

Gerry groans, “Can you stop vibing for a few seconds and show me how this thing works?”

Michael shuffles into the kitchen, carrying his laptop with him, eyes fixed to the screen. He glances briefly at the coffee machine, pushes a few buttons, and fits a mug under the nozzle to catch a perfect stream of coffee. Gerry throws his hands up in defeat. Michael heads back to the couch, before stopping abruptly along the way.

“Why does it like you more than me? You don’t even drink coffee, this is bull-.”

“Gerry, I love you, but please shut up,” Michael says, a buzzing energy in his voice.

Gerry looks up to see Michael intently scanning over something on his laptop screen, biting his lip. Gerry watches as his face splits into a grin before dropping the computer on the counter. “I got the job!” he sing-songs.

Gerry’s eyes light up, “That means we can turn the heating back on?”

“Yeah, baby!” Michael says, smooching Gerry dramatically.

“Thank god for your vibes, Michael.”

*

Gerry is in Pinhole Books. He doesn’t know why he’s there, or why it looks exactly the same, because he sold it years ago. He goes up the stairs. There’s something weird about them, like they’re going for much longer than they used to. Finally, he’s in the apartment above. The walls are red, soaked and dripping. Gerry can’t speak, it hurts too much.

He looks at the floor, every fleck of gore indiscernible from the next. Mary is there. She’s covered in blood, but it isn’t hers. She is unharmed. Alive and whole. Gerry is scared.

The room warps around him, suddenly he’s on his knees, elbows dipping into the bloody carpet. There’s a body in front of him. He knows it’s Michael, even if his face has already been peeled away. Gerry’s mind is burning; he can’t comprehend the terror flooding through his brain and he never will. Gerry screams, and tries to stand.

He trips on a loose floorboard. His knee goes through something soft and wet and warm. He doesn’t look at it, he can’t, but he knows what it is. Who it was. Mary’s face is before his, black script crawling grotesque across her shaven scalp. She pulls him forward by his septum piercing, dragging him across the floor. She’s tugging him toward a door. 

Beyond it is pain and fear. He knows this because he can see it. A dark sky, a horrifying red the colour of a battlefield, eyes pulsing wide and voyeuristic amongst the clouds. Screams of terror and loneliness. The tearing of flesh. Gerry looks behind him, and Michael stands there, whole, and unbloodied. He’s crying.

“You left me,” Michael says, voice shivering and wrong, muffled by a thick layer of fog. Michael smiles, “I knew I was right. I knew I couldn’t be loved. I’m too _wrong_.”

“No, no, Michael! Wait, Michael, I can fix this!” Gerry tries to shout but the words clog in his throat. Tears spring to his eyes as the pressure of them push out against his chest, gnawing and hungry to be understood.

Gerry watches helplessly as Michael reaches a hand toward a doorknob. The door is glaringly yellow, and Gerry can’t look at it. He’s forced to turn his head away as Michael steps through, enveloped in churning, twisting Technicolor, laughing something swirling and broken. Gerry looks back up at Mary, and her skin is peeling away in sheets as she drags him into her new world.

Gerry wakes up. He is drenched in sweat as he looks wildly around the room. There are hands on him, a voice in his ear. He turns, frantic, and Michael is there. He paws at Michael’s face, looking in his eyes to find nothing but grey concern. He pats down his chest, clean and dry, completely uninjured. Michael lets him; this isn’t the first time this has happened.

Michael wraps his arms gently around Gerry, still talking quietly to him, “I’m here, we’re safe. We’re together, she’s dead.”

Gerry presses his face into the crook of Michael’s shoulder, running his hands up and down his back, checking that everything is right where it should be. He keeps his eyes open; he doesn’t want to see what’s waiting for him behind his eyelids.

“Same one?” Michael asks.

Gerry nods.

“I can’t believe… can’t believe you saw that shit, what she did to herself. And I never noticed you acting different. Like, sure you acted off a lot of times, I just chalked it up to the weird shit that you did. I could never have fathomed that…” Michael trails off with a shiver.

“Can we… not talk about it,” Gerry whispers hoarsely.

“Right, right! God, sorry,” Michael says, dropping a kiss into Gerry’s hair. “Do you want to go to sleep?”

Gerry considers for a moment before shaking his head. “No, I… don’t think I can, right now.”

“Ok, well I’ll stay up with you, then,” Michael says.

Gerry pulls back, “You have work in the morning, don’t be stupid. I’ll… um, hm,” he was going to say he’d go out to the couch and watch telly, but he doesn’t know if he can deal with Michael being out of sight for the next few hours.

“Okay, here’s what we’ll do. You watch Netflix on your laptop, with earphones and the brightness turned way down, and I’ll be here if you need me,” Michael says, fishing Gerry’s laptop out from under the bed.

“O-okay,” Gerry says. He leans against the headboard, propping himself up against a mound of pillows, and tucks the buds into his ears. Michael slings an arm around his hips and shifts a pillow over his face, blocking the blue glow of the screen.

Gerry tries his best to entertain himself between Netflix and YouTube for a few hours, checking Michael’s still there every other twenty minutes, until the sun starts to bleed through the window curtain and Michael gets up to get ready for work.

*

There’s a knock at the front door. Michael looks at Gerry confused, as he stirs some honey into a mug of tea. “Are you expecting anyone?”

“Michael, I do my damn best to make sure nobody knows where I live,” Gerry deadpans, frowning at the door. “I’ll get it.”

“Be nice to them!” Michael says absently, craning his neck to watch as Gerry looks through the peephole, and opens the door. It’s a woman, in her mid-fifties, with crows’ feet and greying brown hair. She looks nervous, and Gerry can’t quite place her, though he knows he’s seen her before.

From behind him he hears, “Mum?”

The woman looks passed Gerry, any pleasantries she might have prepared dying on her lips as she sees her son for the first time in ten years. Gerry can see a myriad of emotion playing on her face, guilt and happiness fighting it out for a lead role. He looks back at Michael, unsure if he should step back and let her in or slam the door in her face.

Michael looks dumbstruck, and startles as he realises his mug is slipping and he’s spilling tea onto the floor. He rights it and looks back up at his mother, mouth hanging open. He blinks a couple times and waves at Gerry to open the door.

“Mum, what’re you… How did you find me? Why are you here?” Michael says, setting his mug down and tentatively approaching her.

The woman lets out a strange laugh, a little hysterical, very joyous, “You’re in the phone book, sweetie. May I hug you?” her hands drift up, hanging in the air uncertainly.

“Gotta fix that,” Gerry mumbles.

“Yeah, I, uh, yeah,” Michael says, tripping forward to wrap his arms around his mum, having to bend over most of the way due to her short frame. “Would you like some tea? It’s… it’s been so long.”

Gerry frowns, watching the interaction. This woman stood by and watched as her husband kicked her only son out. But then, Michael has always been incredibly forgiving.

“Yes, please, Michael,” she says gently, watching with undeniable love in her eyes as Michael goes into the kitchen and prepares another mug, hands shaking. She turns to Gerry. “I’m sorry, I should introduce myself. I’m Winona.” She offers a hand.

Gerry shakes it. “Gerard. We’ve actually met,” he decides to tell her. He allows himself to be amused when she looks confused.

“I don’t recall?” she says. She’s still smiling, though.

“When he was six, Michael brought home an orphan boy. Do you remember that?” Gerry says.

Her eyes widen and she says in a disbelieving whisper, “That was you? My how odd that you found each other. That’s quite remarkable.”

Gerry smiles slightly, thinking of how many times he’d thought the same thing. “Sure is, Winona.”

“And you’re Michael’s… boyfriend?” She asks, saying it like she’s unsure of the pronunciation, but her tone remains friendly, curious even.

Gerry glances at Michael adding a dash of milk to a steamy mug, and smiles, “Yes, ma’am.”

She nods once. Michael bustles out of the kitchen and ushers Winona over to the sofa and armchair in front of a TV that they like to call the living room. He hands her the mug of tea once she’s sitting on the couch and takes a seat beside her. Gerry sits in the armchair, not wanting to leave Michael alone in this situation, no matter how good her intentions may seem.

“Michael, the first thing I want you to hear from me is that I love you, I always have, and I’m sorry,” she says firmly, holding the mug shakily in her hands.

Michael doesn’t answer for a moment, and his eyes are glistening, “Mum, I…”

“You don’t need to explain yourself to me,” she says, “You are my son, and I shouldn’t have done what I did,” her voice breaks at the end of the sentence, and she wipes hurriedly at her eyes. “I was horrible to you, your father, he… I allowed him to cloud my judgment. He told me God would’ve wanted it this way, but I know now, God wouldn’t want such a painful thing as a mother losing her beautiful boy.”

Michael lets out a choked sob and crumples against his mother’s shoulder. For a split second, her face is nothing but surprise before it melts into relief and she’s crying into Michael’s shoulder in return. Gerry begins to feel a little like he’s intruding, and so steps out to make a cup of coffee.

He comes back and finds Winona gripping Michael’s hands in her own, teary eyed but smiling brightly. Michael is tentatively asking after his dad. Her face falls a little.

“He’s… he’s sick, dear. It’s not, well, probably not going to kill him, but he isn’t doing well. I chose now to come find you because he’s too weak tell me not to,” she says, wiping at Michael’s face with her thumb.

“Oh, um, okay,” Michael says, unsure how to process that information. “And you’re okay?”

“Yes, dear, I’m fine, how- ah, how have you been?”

Michael looks taken aback at the question, but answers promptly, “I, uh, what do you mean, like, now or? Since then?”

“How are you, now?” she clarifies, looking concerned into his eyes.

“Now? I’m pretty good! I’m working down at Kensington Central Library, and that’s a lot of fun, and I have Gerry, and I’m just… I’m good, actually,” he finishes, sheepishly glancing at Gerry. He smiles back.

“Michael… I’m so _proud_ of you,” she says. Michael’s face crumbles, and he puts a hand over his mouth, eyes watering again. He gasps a little and shudders as she rubs his shoulder. “I’m so sorry I ever made you doubt that.”

“Mum… thank you,” he says, wiping at his face again.

“Okay, I’ll try to stop making you cry, I’m sure I’ve done that enough,” she winces, “Now, uh, how did you two meet? Well, I guess I know that story, but how did you… come to be?”

Gerry looks to Michael to start, feeling it’s up to him if she tells her or not. Michael tucks a lock of hair behind his ear. “Are you, uh, sure you want to hear about that?” he asks.

“Oh, hush, I’m done with all that don’t-ask-don’t-tell bullshit! I want to know my son!” she says decisively. Gerry’s eyebrows quirk up. It’s about time.

Michael laughs, loud and bright, full of relief and surprise. “Okay, well, you know about how I brought him home when I was six? Well when I was twelve, he sort of trespassed onto the school oval and…” Michael continues to tell her the story of their meetings, and Gerry watches her carefully.

“I do remember Theresa warning me about a strange boy she’d seen with you around that time,” she says when Michael tells her about their day on the beach, minus the illegal drugs.

She shoots Gerry a disapproving look when Michael, stuttering, tells her how Gerry left when he was 19, but seems to reprimand herself quickly, realising their treatment of her son in 2002 wasn’t all that dissimilar. 

Eventually she turns to Gerry with a familiar twinkle of humour in her eye, “So Gerard, are you good enough for my son?”

“Mum!” Michael exclaims, dropping his head into his hands.

“Are you good enough for my boyfriend?” Gerry shoots back.

“Gerry!” Michael hisses.

Winona laughs, and sits back, “I’m sorry, I deserve that. I’m sure you’re plenty,” she turns to Michael and says, in a stage whisper, “He’s quite handsome, really. And you always did like ‘em weird.”

“Oh my god,” Michael stares despondently through his fingers at the floor.

Gerry laughs. Maybe Winona isn’t so bad. They’ve all made mistakes.

Winona leaves once the atmosphere grows just a little too awkward, and she departs quickly after insisting that Michael find her on ‘the FacePage.’ Michael leans against the door once she’s gone and looks contemplatively at the ceiling. Gerry waits for him to say something.

“That was my mother!” he says finally.

“Sure was, babe,” Gerry says, coming forward to slide his hands around Michael’s waist. “She really loves you, Michael. This is a good thing.”

Michael grins down at him and says wistfully, “Yeah… I think she does.”

Michael rests his chin on Gerry’s head and sighs happily, “Did you see the way she looked at my teeth? She so regrets not getting me braces.”

“If you got braces, I would’ve rioted in the streets,” Gerry mumbles into Michael’s collarbone.

Michael laughs, “I still could, I know a few people who are getting them later in life.”

“Don’t you fucking dare, Michael,” Gerry says, starting to away from him.

“No, come back, I’m kidding,” Michael giggles, reeling Gerry back in and planting a kiss in his hair.

*

Gerry is sitting on the steps of the Library when Michael gets out. He’s stiff and sore from a long day of just… being used as a punching bag by a stupid fucking Leitner, and his muscles complain loudly as he stands up. Michael looks up in surprise when he sees him, wrapping a plaid scarf around his neck.

“Gerry? I’m not late,” he checks his watch, “why are you here?”

Gerry walks the last couple of steps to meet Michael, leaning against him and burying his hands up under his thick coat, breathing in the smell of his clothing detergent. “I just… I wanted to see you.”

“Oh,” Michael says, a tentative smile in his voice as he drapes his arms around Gerry’s shoulders and squeezes him close. “Bad day, huh?”

Gerry breathes out a shaky laugh and nods, tucking his nose under Michael’s scarf.

“Well… do you want some good news, to make you feel better?” Michael says, dropping a kiss on Gerry’s ear.

“Sure, hit me,” Gerry says.

“I’m on the short list for Library Director,” Michael says, beaming as Gerry pulls back and looks at him.

“Seriously? Michael, that’s fucking great! Fuck, I’m so proud of you,” Gerry says, tugging Michael close by the ends of his scarf and planting a kiss on Michael’s lips. Michael hums into it and cups Gerry’s face in his warm hands, brushing delicately along his jaw.

“And you know what? I’m proud of you for keeping yourself alive,” Michael mumbles against his mouth, drawing teasing circles into the skin of his throat.

“Gee, thanks,” Gerry laughs. “Hey, if you get a raise can we get another cat? Cake-Boy still doesn’t like me.”

“We can get whatever the hell you want if I get the job,” Michael says. “I’ll be your sugar daddy.”

Gerry wrinkles his nose with a chuckle, “Gross. And I’m older than you.”

Michael laughs.

*

Gerry watches Michael as he bustles around the kitchen, making himself a small breakfast of eggs on toast and a mug of tea. It’s nearly noon; they had slept late on Michael’s day off, and Gerry is enjoying listening to Michael hum to himself, hair in a rumpled braid as he comes to sit beside Gerry on the sofa, curling his legs up into his lap and biting into his toast.

Michael watches telly contentedly, wiggling closer to Gerry once he finishes the toast, and gathering his mug of tea into his hands, holding it close for warmth. “Hey, Gerry? Did you look in that shoebox under the bed? It’s okay if you did.”

Gerry looks over at him and mutes the telly. He had looked in the shoebox again, but he thought he’d put it back where it had been before. “Yeah, uh, I did. I was looking for my shoes.” It’s only sort of a lie. Gerry doesn’t know where Michael’s going with this. “Okay, I was looking for my shoes the _first_ time I looked in it.”

Michael smiles at him and it’s genuine and warm. “I just thought you might like to see the photos of us, when we were younger.”

Gerry returns the smile and pats Michael’s leg, “Yeah. You used to be cute.”

“Shut up,” Michael giggles. “Those were, uh, some of the happiest years of my life. When I was with you, I felt untouchable.”

Gerry knows what’s happening- Michael is getting retrospective. It’s something his therapist encourages him to do, be open about his feelings and experiences. Gerry doesn’t mind, he likes listening to Michael ramble about whatever. And if Michael is still hurting because of what he did, the least he can do is listen to him lament about it. He does have to steel himself though, especially if Michael starts to talk about one of his exes, because his retrospectives have a tendency to make them both a little weepy.

“I felt that way, too,” Gerry says, trailing his fingers along Michael’s long legs absently.

Michael leans his head against the back of the couch and regards Gerry with calm eyes, “I like to look at those photos, because they aren’t… tainted. By what I thought. There was a few years, where I didn’t look at them, those years when I was really, really, worse off. So they were… undamaged, by that.”

“What do you mean?” Gerry prompts.

“For a while, I didn’t know if you loved me before you left, sometimes I still feel like you might not have. The memories of us together, before college, they’re all covered up by me thinking that you left me because I wasn’t good enough. I know that isn’t why you left, I see you getting ready to interrupt,” he says with a cheeky grin, “I know now, so don’t worry. But I combed through those years so often in my mind, trying to find where I went wrong, what I could’ve changed to make you stay, that they’re all… tainted now. I think back to you and me, hiding up in my bedroom on Sunday mornings and I can’t see the love through all the uncertainty that built up on top of it.” He pauses to take a deep breath. “But those photos. When I look at them, I can see it clearly, the way you looked at me. The way I looked at you. I loved you, and you loved me back. I _believe_ that. I love you now, and you love me now, and I _know_ that.”

Gerry blinks away the mist gathering over his eyes. “God, Michael. I fucking love you so much.”

“Jeez, stop crying, you big sap,” Michael says, voice watery, as he puts his cup down and wiggles into Gerry’s arms for a slow, tender kiss. “You saw what else was in the box?”

“The note? Or the ring?” Gerry asks, brushing a few wayward strands of Michael’s hair out of his face.

Michael’s face flushes bright, and he says, “The ring.”

Gerry tilts his head, smiling, “Yeah, what’s that about? You’ve got something up your sleeve.”

Michael giggles and shakes his head, “You know the note I slipped under your door; after you left, and before I realised?”

“Yeah?”

“I said that I had another present for you,” Michael says. “It was that ring.”

“God, Michael, that ring looks expensive! You were a part time cashier!”

“I saved literally everything I earned to buy that thing. It’s weird to think about, how much courage and belief I had in me. I was only 19, but I was going to ask you to marry me,” Michael laughs, like it’s some silly thing.

Gerry’s mind is blank. He can’t think. He can see Michael’s face moving in front of him, hear him making sounds, but he can’t react. Michael was going to _propose_?

“Gerry?”

“Y-you… you were, uh, you were… going to…? You were going to ask me? Ask me? To marry. To marry you?” Gerry manages, tongue tripping over the words, so foreign in his mouth.

“Y-yeah,” Michael says, starting to frown slightly, “Is that so… weird?”

“No! I mean… yes? I mean, fuck. Um, hold on,” Gerry says, moving his hands to hold Michael’s, not wanting him to get the wrong idea and run away while he gets his brain back in working order.

“Okay, I got it,” Gerry says, then turns to face Michael, expression still full of concern. “Michael. I want to marry you.”

Michael’s eyebrows shoot up, and his mouth falls open. “Really? Like, now? Like, currently?”

“Yes!” Gerry enthuses. “Wait, okay, I’ll ask, here I go-.”

“Wait, no!” Michael says, jumping off the couch, “I’ll be back.”

Gerry blinks, stunned at his sudden departure. He doesn’t have long to wait before Michael is back, a little breathless, with something in his hand. He drops to one knee in front of Gerry. “Gerard Keay,” he starts. “Wait, no,” he stands up again, then gets back down onto the knee, “Gerry Delano…”

Gerry bites his lip.

“…Will you marry me?” he asks, grey eyes wide and hopeful.

“Fuck, yeah!” Gerry says, pulling Michael up into his lap, kissing him breathless. Michael laughs, the sound bright and musical. Gerry can’t keep kissing him properly, he’s smiling so wide.

“Well, come on, I have to put it on,” Michael says, prying Gerry’s left hand off of his waist and holding up the ring. He slips it on and lets out a little squeal at the sight of his ring on Gerry’s finger.

“Wait, what about your ring?” Gerry asks.

“Christ, Gerry, I was only a part time cashier,” Michael grouses happily, dropping big, smacking, kisses all over Gerry’s face.

Finally he gets it all out of his system and leans his forehead against Gerry’s. Gerry is having trouble keeping himself composed under the weight of this new ring on his finger.

Michael presses forward slowly, capturing Gerry’s lips in a kiss that burns through Gerry’s veins and melts his brain. It’s tender and speaks of years of untold anguish and ecstasy. In Michael’s mouth Gerry feels the decade he wasted, so far from where he was supposed to be, he feels the singular days they spent together, finding each other time after time. He feels the certainty, that now is all that’s ever going to matter.

Cake-Boy jumps onto the back of the couch, using Gerry’s knee as a stepping stone, digging her claws in. Gerry yelps and they break apart, Michael laughing and stroking his face reverently.

Michael kisses him again, slow, and soft, and Gerry is whole. Michael is here and Gerry is with him. They’re together and they’ve found home.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for sticking around until the last chapter and for all the lovely comments and kudos. Im thinking of doing something with Michael Distortion next, so if you have any suggestions or prompts at all, pls don’t feel shy and drop an ask in my tumblr @theroswellcrashsite
> 
> <3

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feel free to let me know what you think ;D


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